have become popular in pop culture regarding the Amish and that bumped up their popularity among some Amish. Some ultra-conservative or more conservatively ideological Amish would perhaps not let their children play with dolls that have faces, but that, in my experience, is more of an individual parental issue and less of a church issue.įaceless dolls, however. Again, I can only convey my personal experience, having been in scores of Amish homes over the years and I've seen plenty of Amish children playing with plastic non-Amish dolls from large companies like Mattel or Hasbro. Keep in mind the Amish are Anabaptists, they are not officially church members until they are adults, so the children have a lot more latitude in what they do and what they don't do than the adults. I've seen first-hand plenty of Amish children playing with dolls that have faces.

For the most part, Amish people don't want to be photographed citing Exodus 20:4 King James Version's verse 'Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:' That interpretation has generally just been applied to live people, not to dolls. A common refrain I hear is that the Amish don't use mirrors (not true, that is a topic for another time) and that Amish children only play with faceless dolls. As with almost any topic concerning the Amish there is no one-size-fits-all answer and a lot of nuance. In reality, either answer is probably true some of the time.

CAPTION: Photos by Traditional Arts Indiana, dolls on Kathryn Lengacher's work table.Īmish children only play with faceless dolls, true or false?

Faceless dolls