In the 1920s and 1930s, getting a felt doll for your little girl showed you had cash and style. Brilliant color and state-of-the-art design characterize the best felt dolls. Each scissor cut, each embroidered motif is scheduled painstakingly to form a figure that sells itself in the finest toy shops. Curiously, though felt is a cheap material, it was employed, particularly in the mid-20th century, for some of the more totally produced dolls, especially those by Lenci in Italy and Chad Valley in Britain . In the 1920s and 1930s, when standard youngsters were given bisque-headed baby dolls, rich kids from fashionable families played with well-designed, up-to-date felt toys. Felt, produced by matting or felting together fibrous fabrics like fur and wool, has been made since traditional times. As fiber, felts don’t have a woven structure, so that the fabric doesn’t fray at the perimeters and is perfect for cutting or stamping out little ornamental flowers or geometrical shapes. Wool or hair needs to be used as a base in felt make, though a complete variety of less expensive materials such as cotton and hemp are incorporated.
Frequently in factory-made dolls, felts of different thickness are used to make different textural as well as patterned effects. Italian designers have an unmistakeable affinity for fabric, so small wonder the all time leader of fashionable dolls in felt was Lenci, a firm made by Enrico and Elena Scavini.
Like Margarete Steiff, the Scavinis were galvanized by the local variety of good felt and other fabrics. Turin was one of the premiere cloth-producing areas of Italy, so the doll makers selected from a big variety of colours and weights of fabrics. They made beguiling babies, living in an idealized sector of infancy. The 1st Lenci dolls were promoted as Scavini but by 1922 they were sold as Lenci di E.
Scavini, with the Lenci trademark registered in America in 1924. This original design is harking back to Steiff, as it touches on Human figures and grotesque characters. By 1920, Lenci offered more than fifty designs, with footballers, cowboys, and kellies reflecting a range like Steiff.
From the 1st, Lenci dolls were described as inventive and refined products, with many models , for example the colourful Harlequins, aimed at the exclusive carriage trade. Brilliant colours were juxtaposed in surprising mixtures, ornamental edgings exactly cut away, and shoes and underclothes properly finished. The factory was awfully far smaller than Steiff’s operation, with only around 360 workers in 1938, while the German firm had more than 1000. But in both Italy and Germany, the creation of detailed felt dolls relied on talented needlewomen whose work might be acquired cheaply. Lenci made some personality figures ,eg Chinamen, but their main emphasis was on toddler types. Lenci’s patents refer to felt heads that were barely starched and wetted by hot steam before they were put under pressure. Many layers of starched fabric, sometimes backed with buckram, were then pressed in place for extra strength. A number of variations on this basic technique were introduced, as strength was required when felt was employed for molded bodies as well as heads. While the Lenci felt dolls were well assembled, these dolls wouldn’t have kept their attraction were it not for the wonderful garments. Their outfits reflect the most trendy kids’s designs of the 1920s and 1930s. No other doll maker handled felt with the coolness of the Italians, who seamed miniscule squares together to form check and tartan effects that would appear a startling wasteful of time if they weren’t so attractive. The biggest of the dolls were 34 inches, but most survivors are less than twenty-three inches.
In the 1930s, felt-faced dolls were sold as status products.
These dolls were costly showpieces fitted with good mohair wigs and properly made shoes and socks.