Antique Comb Collectors Club Newsletter, Vol. 16, No. 5

ANTIQUE COMB COLLECTOR The Official Publication of the Antique Comb Collectors Club International Editor’s email* DORIS DREYER HEDGE She said this would be her last convention. I know she was in pain. Her daughter, Ranee - and in years before, her daughter Ardee, accompanied her to conventions - and helped with the wheelchair. It is hard to think of a comb convention without Doris Hedge. I remember when she spoke about Southwest Indian hair ornaments on that first comb convention program in Florida. It was 1993, she was beautiful in her blue and lace Spanish outfit with frothy white mantilla covering the high Spanish comb nestled in her sleek, upswept blonde hair. We have corresponded ever since. Let me tell you about Doris. I have one of her books, “Fashions In Combs," probably the first one published just about combs. That k contained about 200 combs and it turns out, it was one of the things that drew comb collectors together. “First editions” are still available, though she cautions that “we (collectors) know so much more now, that we can see errors in it. Like the map Columbus drew, it was a beginning,” she said - and a “first” is a value in itself. Doris Dreyer Hedge She told me it was the summer of 1984 that Doris Eff, a trained artist and her husband drove their “Fifth Wheel” to Alaska and visited Betty and Ralph Miller at the Comb Museum in Homer. Excited about the comb club they wanted to start, Betty shared the names of collectors she knew and Doris sent letters to them and advertised her book. It was November, 1985 when the two began the quarterly newsletter. This was the birth of the club. (They enlisted me to write a profile in the August, 1986 issue and I produced the ACC from then on). “Now,” Doris said, “the newsletters are priceless to any collector - that’s the way I feel about them. I wouldn’t part with them, but at 84, I don’t think I can collect any more,” she said, sadly. “I kept every one of the newsletters in notebooks, with clippings I had collected about combs. I sent all the notebooks to Darcy to be raffled off at the convention in Grand Rapids to efit the Club treasury. But somehow they got lost. now, rescued, I’d like to send them to benefit the next convention. I just want collectors to own them. “I first started collecting when a friend sent me a box of many, many combs. She said, “Take what you want and send the rest back.” This friend was a traveler and tried to buy combs in every country she visited, but lately she said she couldn’t remember where she got what. I bought $600 worth from her. In the 1970’s, $600 went a long way. This experience taught me to write everything down as soon as I found one. I did, intending some day to write a book. Before that I only collected the type I wear every day - I love to wear tortoise shell. My husband, Robert, liked to travel and to stop at antique shops. At one time we had 400 in our collection but now I just keep about 100 - mostly the ones I wear. I started to plan the book before we went to Alaska.” Doris loves to talk combs. We talked about those that had been in her collection. “There was this neat comb I got from a lady that was my customer when I had a cosmetics studio in Tucson. She was in her 80’s and