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Doll:Little Sweetheart

Armand Marseilleca. 1910

The Strong National Museum of Play

The Strong National Museum of Play
Rochester , United States

In 1909, the Max Schreiber, manager of the toy-and-doll sales for a Munich, Germany, department store, sought to invigorate the doll industry and boost dolls sales by inviting artists-he deliberately avoided established doll makers-to create new dolls. He asked only that these artists design dolls that look like the children who "played in the streets of Munich," not like the ubiquitous dolly-faced dolls that depicted romanticized faces of children with an exaggerated sweetness and innocence. A number of German artists and sculptors produced doll faces based on real children, and to make them more lifelike, the artists captured a variety of facial expressions in their dolls like laughing, crying, pouting, smiling, and sleeping. These first artist-rendered dolls appeared in public displays, and they started a new trend in doll making. Soon German doll makers offered similar, mass-produced dolls of bisque known as "character dolls."

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  • Title: Doll:Little Sweetheart
  • Creator: Armand Marseille
  • Date Created: ca. 1910
  • Location: Germany
  • Type: Dolls from the Early Twentieth Century
  • Medium: bisque, composition, paint, glass, mohair, fabric
  • Object ID: 79.3433
The Strong National Museum of Play

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