BALL JOINTED BODY: A ball joint is a ball (usually wood) between two adjacent sockets. They are strung together with elastic or springs to allow movement of the doll's joints. Antique dolls with wooden ball joints are known to have been made as early as the 18th century. The very early dolls had ball joints at the waist, as well as at each joint such as the hip, knee, shoulder and elbows. By the 1880's this type of body was the favorite used for French Bebes such as the Jumeau Bebes. Emile Jumeau referred to his premier bebe as "Bebe Incassable" or unbreakable doll, clearly referring to the composition body and not the antique bisque head. The German manufacturers such as Kestner later adopted the ball-jointed body for their german bebes.The early French Bebes usually do not have jointed wrists but rather straight wrists. During the 1890's lathes started being used and were more efficient in producing bodies, so muscular definition of bodies gave way to those with a sleeker look. Kestner developed a 10 ball-jointed composition Excelsior body in 1892 that he thought was superior to the earlier 8 loose ball-jointed body used by the French. Except for a few companies such as Jumeau, Kestner and others, manufacturers of composition bodies usually purchased their antique bisque heads from other companies. Each French doll firm developed it's own method of body design. Collectors often find heads on one type of body and believe all such dolls should have that type of body.... but this is often not true. Since heads and bodies were frequently sold separately, there is wide variation. Collectors who remove old bodies because it does not please them asthetically should always preserve the old body and if they pass that doll along should pass along the original body as well. Bodies should however be appropriate to the doll. BODY MARK: Bodies may or may not have any identifying marks. Those with marks make it easier to identify the manufacturer instead of analyzing a manufacturer's body style. German dolls may be marked with the words "Germany", "Made in Germany" or "Excelsior" or "Handwerck". French dolls may be marked with words as well as pictures. Steiner may have a stamped "Bebe Steiner" or "Le Petit Parisien" or a paper picture or label of a french bebe holding a flag or a stamp of the eiffel tower. Dolls by the french firm of Jumeau are often stamped in blue with "Bebe Jumeau", "Jumeau Medaillion D'or Paris" or may have a paper label with "Bebe Jumeau Diplome d'Honneur". STRAIGHT WRIST: A doll with a straight wrists, such as the earlier Jumeau and Steiner dolls, mean that the doll has no joint between the hand and the forearm. The forearm and hand transpose from one to the other.