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Madame Alexander Dolls - Antique
Madame Alexander Dolls, first created by Beatrice Alexander Behrman, have a history dating to around 1923 in New York City. Beatrice, the daughter of a Russian immigrant, grew up surrounded by dolls, especially since her father had built a business as a "doll hospital" for repairing broken dolls.
Born in 1895, Beatrice began at an early age sewing cloth dolls to sell at the Doll Hospital. In those days, the best dolls came from Germany. World War I greatly restricted the flow of new dolls to the United States.
By 1923, Beatrice, who was by now married to Philip Behrman, founded the Alexander Doll Company. She still was making cloth dolls, and these antique Madame Alexander dolls are now quite rare and expensive. Beatrice later expanded her repertiore to composition dolls as well as cloth dolls. Compostion dolls, made of sawdust and glue, were easy to shape and more durable than the older-style porcelain dolls.
Antique Madame Alexander dolls marked the first marketing technique of selling collectible dolls, drawn from various themes. Seizing upon popular news of the day, one of her most popular doll sets was the Dionne Quintuplets collection, which is still quite valuable. She even produced a Doctor DaFoe doll (the pediatrician for the quints).
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Other thematic dolls included a Scarlett O'Hara doll, Three Little Pigs, and Alice in Wonderland. Later on, she created the Pricess Elizabeth and eventually the Queen Elizabeth dolls.
While antique Madame Alexander Dolls are generally considered to be produced prior to 1930, the company had its really big growth spurt after World War II. Plastic dolls also began appearing in the 1940's. Such characters as Jacqueline Kennedy and Queen Elizabeth II were popular items in the 1950's and 1960's. The Alexander-kins, smaller plastic dolls of the 1950's, are still among the best-known Madame Alexander Dolls.
All Madame Alexander Dolls are noted for the angelic expressions on their faces. An innovation credited to Madame Alexander is the mechanism for closing the eyelids of the dolls while reclining as if in sleep.
After more than eighty years of doll-making, Beatrice Alexander Behrman passed away while sleeping on October 3, 1990, at her home in Palm Beach, Florida. She had lived to the ripe old age of 95.
Nevertheless, Madame Alexander Dolls are still produced to this day. The Alexander Doll Company, now owned by Kaizen Breakthrough Partnership, have their own website and feature an online catelog and e-commerce order capabilities.
If you have items like these for sale, you may advertise them on this page.
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