Hello, dollies

By Susan Misur
The Daily Item

March 27, 2008 04:58 am

— MILLMONT -- Laura Lee Ruckle can tell the story behind almost every doll in her collection. This might seem a simple task, but for Ruckle, it's no small feat. She's amassed about 1,400 dolls over the past 35 years.
An artist and former art teacher at the Mifflinburg Area Middle School, Ruckle made about a third of those dolls using porcelain, wood and fabric. But her creations don't end there.
Ruckle, 73, also drapes the walls of her Millmont home with colorful quilts, wall-hangings and framed embroideries she's sewn.
Many of Ruckle's paintings, fabric designs and dolls are on display in the Packwood House Museum, 15 N. Water St., Lewisburg, where she's volunteered as a tour guide for decades. The exhibit runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily through Saturday in the three rooms of the Kelly Gallery, said Richard Sauers, the museum's executive director.
But how does Ruckle fit all of her creations and collections in her home?
"My husband built a garage-sized, temperature-controlled doll house. He's basically an enabler," she said with a chuckle as she picked up various dolls and explained where they came from.
Touring the doll house, Ruckle pointed out one she made: a fabric Uncle Sam doll wearing stars and stripes standing on a top shelf. Sitting on the floor below him are Pepe and Lulu, a pair of fabric dolls she made after envisioning their design one morning.
"I just woke up with their image in my head, and I knew Lulu had to be in all red-and-white and that I had to make Pepe to go with her," she said.
Other shelves hold her international doll collection, bride dolls and pop culture dolls. Ruckle has dolls of Norman Rockwell painting his self-portrait (miniature easel and mirror included), Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow and Harry Potter.
Though she didn't make all of them, Ruckle still admires the details in their facial expressions and clothing.
"Some of them are just fascinating," she said, picking up a baby doll from a cradle.
"This was probably my first doll; it was my mom's. I didn't have many dolls as a child."
Ruckle began making dolls when she had children and took classes on how to construct them. And when she purchases dolls, she'll often add her own touches to their outfits.
To the untrained eye, her dolls, quilts, embroideries and even matching earrings and shirts appear to have required a painstaking amount of effort. But she claims some of her projects are quick and easy.
Ruckle showed how her bathroom's window curtains match the orange, pink and yellow flower design she painted on the wall. "All this, the sketching and painting, took me about a half an hour," she said, wearing earrings and a matching shirt covered in a lilac pattern.
"My earrings? I cut out a picture of lilacs, pasted them on cardboard, covered them with mod podge and then glued clip-on earrings to the backs."
Since Ruckle is retired, she keeps busy with her art and teaching private lessons, and she doesn't plan on stopping any time soon.
"I hate to not be busy," she said. "And I love experimenting with new techniques."
For information about the exhibit, call the museum at 524-0323 or visit www.packwoodhousemuseum.com.

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