130 years since Sasha Morgenthaler was born

The Sasha doll groups on Facebook are celebrating 130 years since artist and doll maker Sasha Morgenthaler was born on 30 November 1893 in Switzerland, by sharing photos of our Sasha dolls with each other.

I have photographed a group of our Sasha dolls to celebrate the artistry of Sasha's dolls. There is a nod to her inspiration for the dolls in the form of Trendon Elliott wearing his evacuee outfit which I made for the recent Chat 'n Snap display, as Sasha was greatly moved by the World War II refugees who arrived in Switzerland and subsequently designed the various Sasha doll faces to be quite serious, they are not dolls with cheesy grins!

Her first Sasha dolls were the larger Studio dolls (20 inches tall), it was only later in the 1960s to early 1990s that her doll designs were recreated as 16 inch tall vinyl children and the 12 inch babies and 13 inch toddlers by Gotz and Trendon for commercial production. Our group is mostly Trendon (not the early Gotz as we don't have any of them) and our two later production Gotz toddlers, plus of course my only studio doll Trudi (1965).

Happy 130th Birthday Sasha Morgenthaler

Left to right: Toddler (Claudius) Edmund, (Caleb) Reuben, Studio girl Trudi on her chair, (White dress) Laura, (Marina) Florence, Toddler (Iona) Louisa, Trendon Elliott. Early Trendon babies left to right: Ebony, Davy with his pipe cleaner curled hair and waif Mabel (my first Sasha). They are wearing a variety of outfits by various people.

We won baby Ebony at the most recent Chat 'n Snap in the raffle. My elder daughter named her Ebony and said we should get her a little white kitten called Ivory, but I haven't found one yet.

Thank you to Sasha Morgenthaler for creating these beautiful dolls which have inspired so many of us to design and make beautiful clothes for them.

USA 2022 - Sasha festival part 1

The much anticipated Sasha Festival 2022 had finally become reality.

We arrived in Syracuse, New York State on the Wednesday before the Sasha Doll Festival after 2 days of travelling and visiting friends (including Dorisanne and her daughter Jeanne) in the USA. We soon spotted a few doll friends in the hotel lobby and enjoyed a quiet dinner in the hotel restaurant after a busy day. 

The festival didn't start officially until the Thursday afternoon so we had a leisurely morning getting settled before going to festival registration. Soon I was helping JoAnn set up the Susanna Lewis doll raffle prize while Fran set up her 'Baby's first Christmas' raffle doll nearby. I contributed an abacus I had made from parts I had left over from the SCW workshop in 2018 to Fran's raffle baby ensemble. I had brought the Shakespeare Dream Coat, a print out of the blog post and JoAnn had printed out the picture of the original wearable art by Susanna Lewis to display on the table with the coat (later she also printed out a picture of the embroidered quote on the inside of the coat). My Reuben (Caleb) wore black and modelled the coat in the display, standing with his face to the wall for the next 3 days.

JoAnn and I had so much fun setting up the display, which was one of 6 Raffle dolls at the festival (usually they have about 3), there were some wonderful donations to the Susanna Lewis doll reflecting Susanna's life and likes, at the last minute I made a miniature festival name tag for her about of some thin card and a spare piece of ribbon I had with me to go with her shirt, shorts and glasses outfit that the raffle doll wore for the first day (the outfit was based on a photo of Susanna at a previous Sasha festival). 

The completed Susanna Lewis tribute raffle doll display, with Susanna wearing her usual festival clothes of shirt, shorts and nametag

The Shakespeare Dream Coat, plus some wonderful other outfits inspired by Susanna's clothing style in the Susanna Lewis raffle doll collection

Susanna the Sasha doll in memory of Susanna Lewis, fibre artist and Sasha doll expert

Some knitwear for Sasha (pink and green set, plus the red dress with white blouse) made by Susanna Lewis and donated by her daughters, also the pale blue dress made by JoAnn as a copy of the dress Susanna wore one Christmas as a child

We had some food then joined the 'meet and greet' which was the first 'event' of the festival, at 6pm. This was held in the same large conference room as all the raffle and auction displays were set up in. The theme of the Festival was 'Christmas in July' with the theme for the 'meet and greet' set as 'ugly Christmas sweater'.

Our dolls (l-r) Edmund, Russell (our SCW Charity doll), Louisa, Melanie and Florence in their 'ugly Christmas sweaters'

People had brought their dolls dressed in fun Christmas clothes, some of them even dressed up for the occasion themselves. We caught up with friends we'd made at the 2017 festival and met some new friends (people I had previously only communicated with via the online Sasha groups).

Some Sasha dolls (and friend) in their Christmas wear

A Meowy Christmas sweater on this lovely Sasha

Santa's little helper

Another fun 'ugly Christmas sweater' worn by this Gregor looks like it has taken this Sasha by surprise

Red knitwear and an ice skating sweater on this Gregor and Sasha

Lots of decorations on this girl's sweater

Gingerbread and ribbons on this boy's sweater

Dark warmth and a Christmas tree sweater for these two

A later Gotz girl with repainted eyes wears her Christmas tree sweater proudly

A sweet little dress and hat on this little Gotz Esther toddler

The sweater girl rocks her gingerbread man dress

The famous Curly had his hair done in red Christmas bows by his friends, even his gavel got a bow.

This girl wears a wonderful printed Christmas pinafore dress while the toddler sports a knitted Christmas playsuit

After the 'meet and greet' we returned to our room to redress some of our Sasha dolls in readiness for the 'Dress a Sasha' competition the next morning.

Dolly Jolly 2022 part 1

The long awaited Dolly Jolly had arrived and we started driving north as soon as my daughter got out of school early. Despite the heavy traffic we made it to Darlington by 6:30pm so were in time for dinner at 7:00pm with the others who were attending - private dining in a large room with the windows open.

The first evening dinner included the raffle. I brought in the picnic prize I had made which Janet decided would be the final raffle ticket of the evening.

Raffle prizes including the picnic hamper, picnic rug and Easter bonnet outfit I had contributed

Raffle prizes galore!

We all admired the other prize table, displaying the prizes for the Dolly Bingo for the second evening, a tantalising array of top prizes.

The Dolly Bingo prizes table

Most people had brought one or more doll to dinner and after we had eaten I went round the table taking photos of the dolls. We brought Laura and Florence to dinner with us.

Florence in her Windmill 'Ted Menton' pinafore dress
and Laura in an outfit by Lorraine Tyler and a Dollydoodles hoodie

Dolls at dinner

Harry Potter with Hedwig and Dobby

A little sweetie with her toy dog and bear

Two little Helen Kish dolls

Three doll friends

A Gotz Sasha with a Dionne Quintuplet

A glorious rag doll, very huggable

Two beautiful Sasha girls

A Zwergnase girl having a glass of wine!

We bought several strips of raffle tickets and were amazed to win 12 lovely prizes (I haven't taken photos of them yet). Thank you to all those who donated prizes, everyone attending won more than one prize. It was such a fun evening and so good to catch up with previous doll friends plus meet some new doll friends.

The following morning Teddy, Alice and I went shopping for our contributions to the picnic which I had organised for that day. It was a glorious spring morning, so we were hopeful the picnic would not be rained on. 

Tricia had coordinated the room hopping - this involved those who had dolls they wanted to display putting them on show in their hotel rooms, each of us being given the list of room numbers plus the times they were open. There were 5 rooms in the morning session and 5 in the afternoon session. My daughter and I did not have a room display because she was revising for her examinations in our room, so I visited the morning rooms after returning from picnic grocery shopping. My photos only indicate the order I visited the rooms, I am not labelling these to indicate ownership of any of the dolls and scenes depicted.

Sasha Bakery in Room 1

Sasha Bakery in Room 1

Sasha Bakery in Room 1

Sindy room in Room 1

Sindy room in Room 1

Lenci doll in Room 1

Sasha dolls and friends in Room 1

A mixed collection of dolls (including Sasha, Maggie Iacono, Lati Yellow, Topper Dawn, Schoenhut, Pongratz, Ruby Red and Ten Ping) in Room 2

Some Sasha and Gregor dolls in Room 3

A Roddy doll with Roddy and Rosebud friends in Room 3

Some Sasha dolls in Room 4

Trendon Sasha sisters joined by their Gotz Sasha sister in Room 4

Close up of a Sasha in Room 4

Sasha, Lenci, Frozen Charlotte and the Dionne Quintuplet in Room 4

The Dionne Quintuplet in Room 4

A mixed collection of dolls (including Pippa, Jakks Pacific, Helen Kish, Ball jointed dolls, Xenis, Rainbow High) in Room 5

Some of the dolls in Room 5

Rag dolls, Rainbow High, Chrissie and others in Room 5

Ball jointed doll in Room 5

Two restored dolls in Room 5

Then it was picnic time!