Tilly Aston's childhood doll has a cloth body, and a papier-mâché head, the face of which is brightly handpainted. More expensive dolls at the time had bisque (a kind of porcelain) or china heads, with wooden and sometimes cloth bodies and even ball joints, and were imported from Europe, with French dolls seen as premium.

Papier-mâché dolls were often manufactured in Germany and America, although it is not known where Tilly's doll was made. The clothes are hand knitted and could well have been homemade.

Tilly Aston’s achievements are formidable. In 1894 she founded the Victorian Association of Braille Writers, which became the Victorian Braille Library. In 1895, she co-founded the Association for the Advancement of the Blind, which in became Vision Australia. As well as being the first woman who was blind to be admitted to an Australian university and Australia's first blind teacher, Tilly was a distinguished and critically acclaimed writer, producing seven books of verse. Tilly received a Commonwealth grant for her writing in 1935, and the King’s Medal for Distinguished Citizenry twice.

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