Maggi Lindee says she always wanted to be a costume designer, an ambition she says led to her doll collection that now numbers 1,000.
Lindee, 78, gives tours of the 1,000-doll collection by appointment, mostly to community groups and Girl Scout troops.
As a longtime member of the Frankfort chamber and founder of the annual Frankfort Farmers Market, Lindee is a familiar figure in the village. She is also a member of the Frankfort Women’s and Garden clubs.
The Ohio native spent the early part of her marriage following her engineer husband, Carl Lindee, around the country as his career progressed.
They and their three children left the Chicago area for a 3 1/2-year stint in Pennsylvania. There, Maggie and Carl discovered the world of antiques.
“We started going to farm auctions,” she said. “He got into antique motorcycles and I got into dolls.”
Lindee also became a doll restorer, an occupation that consumed the greater part of her life.
“I’m a perfectionist,” she said, a trait that makes her well-suited for such intricate work. As a doll “doctor” she reset eyes and rebuilt hands, restored the kid leather bodies of the older dolls and replaced or repaired costumes.
Lindee also began her doll collection while in Pennsylvania. She now has a Twiggy doll, Madame Alexander, Shirley Temple, Charlie McCarthy and others. She has a primitive hand-carved wooden doll that is about 200 years old. Her favorites are her Schoenhuts, lifelike German dolls made during the early part of the century.
“I like the old ones,” she said. “I’m not too much into the newer dolls.”
The farmers market is every Saturday in the parking lot beside Breidert Green through Oct. 10.
