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.

Doll-A-Day 2019 #178: Shoppin' Sheryl

  I haven't mentioned yet that we have some new babies around here. You know, you think if your cats never leave the house, they can't get pregnant. What you never imagine is another cat breaking into your basement! A couple of years ago somebody tried to break into our basement. (Selling the copper pipes out of someone's basement is a big enterprise around here, and we live right down the street from the recycling place.) They broke a window out. I replaced the window with a board, which I cut to fit perfectly and put in there nice and tight. I don't know how it got loose.Somebody must have tried to break in again, because there's no way the cat pushed it out. In any case, Ken went down to feed the girls,who were taking their turn at staying in the basement. (The boys had stayed for a while. See, my son brought home 8 cats a few years ago when his friend moved away and couldn't take them. There was a mother and 6 kittens,and one other cat. He wouldn't allow anybody to have a kitten because nobody was good enough.Well once they grow up, nobody wants one. I even tried to interest the readers of the blog at the time with this post. Anyway, I can't have all those cats in the house, so the girls and the boys were taking turns. ) There were so many cats that Fuzz couldn't afford to have them all 'fixed'. We figured if the boys were fixed, which they needed to be so they wouldn't spray,then the girls couldn't get pregnant. Then Ken went down to feed the girls and found an intruder in the basement! He couldn't catch him,so we couldn't seal the window again until we knew he was out. Ken couldn't figure out how he even got in until daytime when he could look outside and he found the window out again. If it hadn't been below freezing temperatures the girls might have left,but they weren't stupid. In any case, we finally got the stranger out,and I hoped it was a girl. No such luck though.I figured as much since he had a chewed ear and only one eye. He had been a fighter. So one day I heard mewing from the basement. We discovered Columbia had had a kitten. Just one though,so we felt lucky. Ivy named it Thalberg,after 1930's movie producer Irving Thalberg.

This is Thalberg. Like all the kittens except possibly one,she has thumbs!

We were so relieved that there was only one kitten! That is, until a couple of weeks later when Ivy went down to see Thalberg and found Gastine's kittens! There are six of them!

The one in the front is Mordred.

Ivy named all the kittens. This is Mordred. Mordred takes after his Siamese grandfather. He has peach coloured ear tips and tail. He's a wild climber. He's the one kitten who may turn out not to have thumbs,(mitten hands).

This is George and Fred. They have thumbs, and back feet thumbs too! Fred has a short tail with a tuft of hair on the end. George is my favourite.

George.

And Fred.

Lucky Merlin has found a home already.

Morgana is the baby Ivy wants to keep. You may have gathered from the names that Ivy is very into the TV series "Merlin".

Little Arthur Freed,(named after 1930's movie producer Arthur Freed), will be living with Emma's boyfriend. He seems to be the only long haired kitten, and he looks very Siamese.

   Emma's boyfriend is taking Arthur, and my sister found a home for Merlin. That still leaves at least three kittens,(Ivy has a soft spot for Morgana.),and both mommies, who still need homes. All but possibly Mordred are polydactyl cats, meaning they have mitten hands.
  So, anybody willing to come to Ohio and adopt a kitten?
  Today I'm giving you a break from the Travel dolls! Instead, today you're getting this little girl.

She's Shoppin' Sheryl.

Shoppin' Sheryl was made by Mattel.

She's from 1970.
She's 15 inches tall.

She has a typical Mattel face.

She resembles so many other Mattel dolls of the 60's and early 70's,with her cute face,big round eyes, and chubby cheeks.

 Her blonde hair is in what we used to call 'dog ears',but now they're called ponytails, or even pigtails,(which were braided when I was a kid.).

Sheryl had quite a gimmick. 

She came with a 'mini market',and  she could be made to pluck items from the shelves and put them in the shopping cart she also came with.

  That walking thing really works. When her legs are put in place and she is rocked gently back and forth,her legs flip forward one at a time. (the leg that she's rocked off of comes forward.)

  The left hand grips when the button in her side is pressed,and releases when the button is released.

Her right hand has a magnet in it. It helps her hold her shopping cart.

She has a twist waist.
 This is Sheryl's original outfit. It consists of  a one piece shirt and jumper,and white shoes.

Her tulip shaped real pockets echo the tulip shapes on her shirt.

There was another 1970 doll who used the Shoppin' Sheryl head sculpt. She was a Montgomery Wards exclusive named Busy Becky. Becky was a red head,who shared Sheryl's twist waist,grasping hand mechanism,and magnetic left hand. Becky's theme was house cleaning, and her magnetic hand was made in the form of a cleaning mitt.
 

She must have the 'walking' ability too.

Becky came with loads of cleaning accessories and a cardboard house background. To see a page with loads about Becky go HERE.
  That's the doll for today. Come back and join us for another one tomorrow.