Doll

Martha Chase strove to make baby and child dolls that looked and felt "natural." She fabricated realistic-looking dolls by using molds she created of existing doll heads. She made a plaster mold of the doll face and created a metal mold from the plaster. She pressed sheets of sized cotton stockinet into the metal mold, and when the sizing dried, the cloth retained the shape and face of the mold. (Chase also used molds to shape feet, hands, and ears for her dolls.) Chase and her talented workers used specially prepared, washable oil paints to copy the doll's facial features from contemporary images of real-life children.