You Can Tell It's Martha Armstrong Hand. It's Swell!

  It is SO HOT! It's been in the 90's,and in our house, with no air conditioning, even hotter. It rained today, but it didn't help. On top of that, I can never close my computer, because if it goes off, I can't get it back on. I am going to be getting away from all this soon,to go where it's even hotter, to help Lori move. Yes, Lori is moving AGAIN. She just moved to Georgia a year ago last month. Unfortunately she is not moving back to Ohio. She's only moving about 45 minutes further North,to a place where the property taxes aren't so high. I'm going down soon to help her finish packing her house up. I'm kind of looking forward to driving 12 hours, just to sit in the air conditioned car! And of course, I get to see Lori. (I hope that didn't sound like I'm looking more forward to the air conditioning.)
  You know that old Mattel advertising slogan,"You can tell it's Mattel. It's swell!"? A more accurate version would have been,"You can tell it's Martha Armstrong Hand. It's got that face!". Martha's dolls have a particular look. Their faces are usually chubby cheeked, with big eyes. Once you've become accustomed to Martha's dolls, you can spot one easily.

Martha with some of her creations, including Baby First Step, Shoppin' Sheryl,Drowsy,Baby Beans,Baby Pattaburp, (on her lap), Tearful Cheerful,and Tatters on the right of her lap.

  Back in the 60's and 70's many of Mattel's dolls were sculpted by Martha Armstrong Hand. Some of her Mattel sculpts include  Baby Pattaburp, Baby First Step, most of the first Liddle Kiddles, the Sunshine Family, Rosebud Baby, Love n Touch Baby, New Living Skipper, Drowsy, Baby Beans, Barbie family dolls Skipper, Midge, Alan, Skooter, Ricky, Tutti, Toddd, and Barbie's friend Steffie, a sculpt still popular with Barbie collectors and still being used by Mattel. She also sculpted the heads for Tutti's friend Chris, and the Tutti sized Buffy doll. Both Chris and Buffy's heads had previously been used for Kiddles. Several of Martha's dolls have been featured here on the blog. Baby First Step had her day HERE.

Shoppin' Sheryl was seen HERE.

Different versions of Drowsy were posted HERE and HERE.

Other dolls made form the Drowsy head sculpt were seen HERE and HERE.

Cuddly Beans.

 

Sleeper Keeper.

    You can see a Rosebud Baby HERE.
 

Malibu P.J.,who has the Steffie head sculpt can be seen HERE.
 

 Love N Touch Baby was featured in THIS POST.

You saw one of my Living Skippers HERE.

  Martha was well known as a doll artist, but in her early career she worked for View Master, costuming, and, eventually, sculpting figures for the 3-D photos.

This is from "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea".

Martha sculpted many of the figures for the View Master Disney reels. I used to love the 3-D settings View Master did, like this one from Bambi.

Martha, working on a View Master setting.

Martha touches up her Bambi.

Her Disney sculpts for View Master included Peter Pan, Bambi, Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge and Chip and Dale.
  Martha also did some work assisting animators at Hanna Barbara on such well known characters as Tom and Jerry.
   Martha is known for her 'ahead of their time' ball jointed dolls, which were extremely posable. She authored the book, "Learning to be a Doll Artist", which showed how her ball jointed dolls were made.
  

   Photos of Martha's amazing jointed dolls were used for the book, "Living Dolls", written by Martha's husband, David. David is quite famous himself, having worked as an animator at Disney, and as supervising director on "Snow White" and "Bambi", amongst other Disney projects.

  

The book told the imaginary story of what happened when Martha's dolls came to life.

 The photos in the book featured a collection of  limited edition dolls made by Martha, called "America's Future". The dolls, with their diverse ethnicities, represented America.

  The book is available on Amazon.
  A NIADA (National Institute of Doll Artists) member called Martha, “the most technically correct doll artist of our time”. You can see Niada's page on Martha HERE. It contains information on Martha, and some photos of her wonderful dolls.
  If you're still curious about Martha Armstrong Hand and her dolls, a video called, "The Work of Martha Armstrong Hand" can be purchased HERE. It can also be viewed on YouTube HERE.