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Handcrafted dolls bring Emirati culture into the playroom
With paintbrush, fabric, and meticulous care, an Abu-Dhabi resident transforms simple wooden forms into reflections of Emirati life
- PUBLISHED: Fri 20 Feb 2026, 8:44 AM
As an early years Montessori governess, Cristina Garach Sánchez Yebra often finds herself thinking of creative ways to keep young children engaged through fun, attention-grabbing activities such as arts and crafts, glass painting, and sculpting with Play-Doh. A few years ago, the Abu Dhabi resident worked with a family that had two young children, and once, she deftly fashioned a thumb-sized figurine resembling an Emirati woman out of clay. Garach was pleasantly surprised when the siblings began to fight over it. “They said, ‘This looks like Mom! Now make Baba’” she recalls, smiling. “They really liked it.” Garach realised that the children were excited to see a toy that mirrored faces that were familiar to them, and represented their culture. “Children have a lot of toys, but they don’t have something of their own which they can relate to,” she observes.
Buoyed by her young audience’s reaction, Garach began to experiment, and over the course of three months, she hand-painted and styled roughly 200 plain wooden peg dolls to represent a typical Emirati family. The dolls, measuring between 3 cm and 7 cm, are also accompanied by other cultural elements, such as miniature Persian carpets and palm trees.
Capturing the essence of Emirati culture
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Garach, who is a Spanish citizen, lived and worked in Ireland and Spain for more than a decade as a Montessori teacher and nanny. In 2020, when the world was in the throes of the pandemic, an agency offered her a job as a governess with a royal family in Abu Dhabi. Since then, she has worked with four families and their children in the UAE. “Emirati families ensure that their children grow up knowing their culture, tradition and heritage,” she says. “They often ask me to design activities and games that are centred on Ramadan, Eid, the UAE National Day and so on.” But like most children across the world, their playrooms often brim with mass-produced toys inspired by Western cartoons and movies. During her trips abroad with families, Garach noticed wide-eyed dolls in traditional attire, available in the market, but the children didn’t really enjoy playing with them.
Her work gives her the unique opportunity to experience and observe Emirati culture from close quarters. “I always knew how Emiratis dressed as I had to dress up the children in their kandoras and jalabiyas,” she explains. “But when I started making these dolls, I began to pay closer attention to smaller details like the knots in their scarves, the patterns and colours of their clothes, every time I went out. I don’t want to mix colours that they don’t use.” This is reflected in the dolls, which are painstakingly painted or dressed in colours like red, blue, maroon, and lighter shades like cream.
Gearing up for Eid
During our chat via Google Meet, Garach swivels the camera and focuses it on the dolls. One ‘family’ is placed on a Persian rug, and the rest are neatly arranged near small palm trees and houses made out of cardboard. We also get a glimpse of her ‘work cart’, heavy with paintbrushes and rolls of fabric. “Right now, I am in between jobs, so I make these dolls when I have some free time or while watching TV,” she says.
Garach holds one of them up — an angelic Emirati ‘boy ’— for our close inspection. “I buy plain wooden peg dolls and paint details like buttons on them with toothpicks,” she explains. “Then I paint their eyes and hair. The girls have their own hairstyles—they could have their long hair out, or in ponytails tucked to the sides. It depends, because Emiratis like to do their hair very well.” Even the hair colour is well thought out. “Everybody here usually has brown or black hair. But I’ve made a few exceptions,” she grins, as she shows us a doll crowned with hair that’s a shade of butter yellow. She says. “I also have a doll with red hair — each doll is different.”
The ‘men’ sport moustaches and beards, and the ‘women’ wear abayas and hijabs, all styled differently. “Initially, I made them with tissue paper, but they broke off easily. So I went to shops that sell abayas and hijabs and bought them,” she explains. “Then, I cut them into little squares and glued them onto the wooden dolls.”
She started gifting these dolls to families at the end of her tenure. “They liked it a lot. I think it shows effort and affection,” she says. When friends and family members encouraged her to sell these dolls, she uploaded a post about them, along with pictures, on Facebook to “test the waters”. “There was a lot of interest as many people got in touch with me, saying that they look cute and that they like it a lot.” When we speak, she says that she is working on getting the right licenses in place before selling the dolls.
“They will be made-to-order and personalised. And they will be available soon, especially with Eid just around the corner, as it can be a good gift,” she says.
“I think what children like about these wooden peg dolls is that they come as a set, as a traditional family unit,” she smiles. “When they see them, they say ‘This is me’, or ‘This is my brother’.”