Dorothy Heizer, Dolls Reference Gallery

American dollmaker and NIADA member Dorothy Heizer left behind a diverse collection of exceptional dolls that excite and inspire all who see her finely hand-crafted art pieces. 
Dorothy Heizer took her interest in the study of historic portraiture and costume and combined it with her delicate needle and painting skills to create awe-inspiring dolls. Born Dorothy Quincy Wendell on February 25, 1881, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she exhibited her artistic nature right from the start. In 1889 she saw a French mannequin in a shop window which planted in her the desire to have a fashionable lady doll of her own. At the age of ten, she drew and painted paper dolls which she sold to Schwartz’s Department store for $3.50 each. 
In 1899 she entered the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts where she studied portrait painting, human anatomy, and some sculpture. She married Charles Edward Heizer in 1906 and by 1914 she and her family were settled in Essex Falls, New Jersey. After making some simple cloth dolls for her church bazaar she began developing a style of doll uniquely her own. In 1924 the Newark Museum commissioned her to make Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh, this was the first of many Queens made by her over the next forty years.
Through the 1930s she participated in a number of exhibits including those of the Arts and Crafts Guild of Philadelphia, the Arts and Crafts Guild of the Newark Museum, the Art Alliance of Philadelphia, and the Arden Studio of New York, always working to perfect her techniques. Heizer’s dolls started with a scaled drawing of the skeleton of the figure based on contemporary portraits of her subject. Next, she made a wire skeleton which was then covered with strips of cotton eiderdown and then a cotton or silk crepe skin. The hands for her smaller scale dolls were of fine glove suede, the hands of her larger dolls were of the crepe fabric. The head and face were then built up and needle sculpted, she used bits of cotton to build out the nose and beads to form the eyes. This was covered with the crepe "skin” using a seam at the chin area.
The crepe fabric skin of the dolls was painted using watercolors in two separate shades to give added definition to the doll’s shape. When this base was dry, she painted the doll’s features. No detail in the costuming was too small to overlook. Heizer often used vintage fabrics in dressing her dolls and whenever possible while making the doll’s jewelry, the exact number of gems was counted from the original portraiture. All together these painstaking efforts produced not only breathtaking works of art but also historically accurate three-dimensional portraits. Her 1948 rendition of Princess Elizabeth in her wedding gown included the use of 45,000 seed pearls and beads.
Her dolls were featured in articles in magazines such as the Woman’s Home Companion, Look, Family, and Life. She made patterns and ragdoll kits which she sold through Modern Pricilla magazine. In 1962 she became a charter member of the National Institute of American Doll Artists (NIADA), this was also the year that she stopped making dolls due to her failing eyesight. Dorothy Heizer died in 1973.