Lili Paschalidou-Theodoridou

Lili (Julia) Paschalidou-Theodoridou (Greek language: Λιλή Πασχαλίδου-Θεοδωρίδου, Istanbul 1911 – Athens 1975) was a Greek dollmaker.

Paschalidou was born in Istanbul (Constantinople) in 1911 and she was daughter of the businessman Constantine Paschalides and the doll maker Despina Pappa. As a student of the Zappeion Girls School of Constantinople, her education included learning French and English, while painting was already part of her regular activities. In 1922 her family left Istanbul and moved first to Varna in Bulgaria, later temporarily to Thessaloniki and then finally to Athens, where they settled permanently in 1925. In 1934 she married Yura Theodoridis. Together they had two children.

Paschalidou-Theodoridou’s family included various artists like her sister Helen Zongolopoulou, the notable sculptor Yannis Pappas, the painters Helen Pangalou and Andreas Vourloumis etc.

In 1948, after her husband’s death, Paschalidou launched a professional doll making career with the support of her mother, who used to be a prominent dollmaker during the Interwar period (she owned a workshop for handmade dolls in Athens). Her small business was in Nea Smyrni, Athens. She employed two other women, refugees from Asia Minor, one of whom had earlier worked for her mother. Her handmade dolls were dressed in Greek traditional costumes that she designed, sewed and embroidered, and she herself also painted the dolls’ faces. For making her dolls faces she used molds especially created for her by the sculptor George Zongolopoulos, her sister’s husband. Lili standardized two different doll sizes and made a leaden bottom of their feet in order for them to stand better.

Paschalidou-Thodoridou was granted a special research permit from Antonis Benakis to study and copy the different costumes in the Benaki Museum collections. She made accurate drawings of woven textiles, embroidered designs and ornate headbands, and in total reproduced 36 authentic traditional costumes, men’s and women’s, from various regions of Greece.

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