PG County Doll Maker Switches To Creating Fashionable Face Masks

SUITLAND, MD — Even before Carole Brothers, owner of Agape Dolls, had started making her African American-inspired cloth dolls, she'd been creating crafts and sewing. So, when a friend suggested she start making fashionable face masks for people to wear outside during the coronavirus pandemic, it was the most natural thing for her to do.

"I donated masks to my neighbor and her husband, and also across the street," the 73-year-old Suitland resident said. "I've sent masks to a missionary couple in North Carolina. They are RV missionaries. No particular group or anything, but once I find a senior citizen group, I'll take some masks in."

Brothers uses cloth from her doll making supplies and it typically takes less than an hour for her sew a mask. She has no particular plan for what each mask will look like, opting to let inspiration guide her.

Brothers' artistic ambitions started in the late 1980s, when she was working in ceramics and selling her creations at craft shows.

"Everybody was doing glazed vases and stuff," she said. "I was more interested in the figurine type. I would use a common technique called dry brushing."

It was while Brothers was creating ceramics that she first learned about the black doll circuit. In the days before the internet, doll makers from across the country would save up their money and travel to a big show in Philadelphia to buy, sell and display their craft dolls.

After a couple of years, Brothers went to the show and decided to try her hand at making a cloth doll.

"Dolls go through stages," she said. "At that time, most of the doll makers were porcelain and vinyl. That's how I started doing those cloth dolls. I tried my hand at a cloth doll for the show and those cloth dolls sold out within about the first hour of the show."

In a very short time, people from all over the country began ordering Brothers' dolls.

"The dolls that I was making at that time were functional," Brothers said. Her first doll, for example, was a bag doll, in which you could put your plastic bags. "Then I designed a paper-holder doll that you could put your paper towels on in the kitchen and it would hang on the wall."

She's also created bookmark dolls for readers and holiday dolls for children.

"My towel doll turns into a dress-me doll for a child," she said. "Also at holiday time, I do tree-toppers, angels, and angel ornaments."

Eventually, Brothers would establish Agape Dolls, a line of cloth figures based on African American and Christian themes. Her work would even go on to sell at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

Brothers mostly uses cloth for her dolls, but she also makes one-of-kind art dolls, in which she'll employ mixed-media, such as using beads to create a face or a stick for an arm.

"When a person buys a doll, on the card is a scripture that might be related to the color or a name from the Bible," she said. "A lot of times, I'll just pull names from the Bible and include a story, like Samuel's mother Hannah. I will put the Bible scriptures relating to the character Hannah in there."

With her Christmas tree-toppers, Brothers will include scriptures that center around Jesus' birth. But she also likes to name her dolls for Biblical characters that people may not be as familiar with.

"Everybody knows Mary," she said. "I try to find names in the Bible that most people are not familiar with their story, like Dinah, Lilah, Priscilla, or Anna. I've had customers come back to tell me, 'Oh, I didn't know that.' The scriptures that I reference to, they will go and read that. That's how I tie the scriptures in with my dolls."

Brothers gets a lot of the inspiration for her dolls from flipping through magazines or viewing art. She likes studying museum quality artwork, breaking down its elements and imagining how she can translate them into a doll.

"It comes from really everywhere," she said. "Sometimes I'll just go to sleep and wake up and go, 'Oh, that's a nice idea.' I keep a notepad by the bed and I will write something down. Sometimes it might take me years to complete an art doll, because I might just work on five elements of that doll for this year."

According to Brothers, sales of the masks on her website have been going particularly well.

"In my workroom, I have a wall of fabric," she said. "Whatever comes out, I can sew it for you."

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