The Flateyri International Doll Museum is currently celebrating its fifteen year anniversary with an exhibition of Guatemalan dolls, wearing traditional indigenous costumes and created with recycled Coca-Cola bottles.
The museum is founded around a gift of national costume dolls by Dr. Senta Siller. Siller visited Flateyri with her husband, prof. Norvert Pintsch fifteen years ago to attend a memorial festival to commemorate the victims of a 1995 avalanche which killed twenty people, devastating this small remote community. Siller is known as “Mother of Dolls” for her work with poor women in developing countries, where she has helped women set up businesses producing national costume dolls.
Siller told the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service that she read about the Flateyri avalanche in a newspaper, and decided she wanted to give the community her collection of national costume dolls as a foundation for a new museum. “I told my husband that I had six suitcases of dolls which I wasn’t using. We should take them to Flateyri and ask them if they wanted a new museum.”
Read more: Today marks 20 years since avalanche hit Súðavík, killing 14 people
Since the foundation of the museum its collection has been expanded with gifts from other collectors, both local and foreign. The local news site Bæjarins Besta also reports that Siller has visited regularly over the years, organizing classes for people interest in handicrafts and doll-making. Last week Siller returned to Flateyri with a new addition to the collection: Guatemalan dolls made from recycled Coca-Cola bottles.
The museum is located on Hafnarstræti street in the small fishing village of Flateyri in the Westfjords, west Iceland.
The Flateyri International Doll Museum is currently celebrating its fifteen year anniversary with an exhibition of Guatemalan dolls, wearing traditional indigenous costumes and created with recycled Coca-Cola bottles.
The museum is founded around a gift of national costume dolls by Dr. Senta Siller. Siller visited Flateyri with her husband, prof. Norvert Pintsch fifteen years ago to attend a memorial festival to commemorate the victims of a 1995 avalanche which killed twenty people, devastating this small remote community. Siller is known as “Mother of Dolls” for her work with poor women in developing countries, where she has helped women set up businesses producing national costume dolls.
Siller told the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service that she read about the Flateyri avalanche in a newspaper, and decided she wanted to give the community her collection of national costume dolls as a foundation for a new museum. “I told my husband that I had six suitcases of dolls which I wasn’t using. We should take them to Flateyri and ask them if they wanted a new museum.”
Read more: Today marks 20 years since avalanche hit Súðavík, killing 14 people
Since the foundation of the museum its collection has been expanded with gifts from other collectors, both local and foreign. The local news site Bæjarins Besta also reports that Siller has visited regularly over the years, organizing classes for people interest in handicrafts and doll-making. Last week Siller returned to Flateyri with a new addition to the collection: Guatemalan dolls made from recycled Coca-Cola bottles.
The museum is located on Hafnarstræti street in the small fishing village of Flateyri in the Westfjords, west Iceland.
