Doll News Fall 2016 - 132
The Saga of Mary Hoyer's Dolls
An interview with Mary Lynne Saunders, Mary Hoyer's Granddaughter
By Margie Hottensen and Barbara Mills co-editors of the "Mary Hoyer Moments Newsletter"
All photos courtesy of Mary Lynne Saunders
W
"
Mary Lynne Saunders appears in this photograph
with her grandmother, Mary Hoyer.
This picture of the first Mary Hoyer doll pattern appeared
in Juvenile Styles Number 1 in 1936.
132
Fall 2016
hat made my grandmother Mary Hoyer's dolls
so special was their uniqueness. They had such
beauty in the creative detail. Something rare
in those days," says Mary Lynne Saunders over coffee on a
gray May Day in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Saunders, a doll
maker in her own right, revived her grandmother's spirit
and philosophy 26 years ago when she restarted the Mary
Hoyer Doll Company in Lancaster where she lives.
Parts of Mary Hoyer's history are well-known to many doll
collectors, but in reflecting on that history, Saunders explains
how her grandparents' business which started in the late
1930s "constantly reflected what was happening in the
country at that time. Before, during, and immediately after
World War II, they remained both flexible and experimental
in succeeding with the company."
In the 1930s Mary Hoyer was designing, knitting
patterns for children and sold yarn in her store in Reading,
Pennsylvania. In one issue of her booklet of patterns, Juvenile
Styles, Mrs. Hoyer hoped to increase sales by borrowing a
child's doll from a neighbor and knitting a doll outfit identical
to the child's dress. People clamored for the pattern! She
realized the doll was a good way to sell the patterns. At that
point she and her husband were using different dolls which
they had purchased. Mrs. Hoyer did not really like the shape
of those dolls' bodies and looked for a doll designer who
could create a doll perfect for her designs.
They headed to New York City to ask Bernard Lipfert,
many years before he became so well known, to design
a doll similar in body shape and size to the doll he had
designed for Ideal Doll Company. Initially he refused
because that Ideal doll had not sold well and he felt it was
not right. Still sure in their concept, the Hoyers promptly
bought out all 1000 of the Ideal ball-joint dolls. These dolls
became the first Mary Hoyer bent arm skater dolls with
mohair wigs and sleep eyes, and they quickly sold out. The
"Mary Hoyer Doll" was launched.
"My grandmother was a wonderful artist and painted
all her life," Saunders remembers. "She decided to approach
Lipfert again and went back to New York with sketches of
what she wanted. He saw the artistic quality of her work
and they spent a long afternoon talking about art. Well,
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