Marilyn Neuhart's T&O dolls

Marilyn Neuhart

The Albuquerque, New Mexico, store máXimo has reintroduced hand-made dolls created by Marilyn Neuhart, a designer and writer who worked closely with Alexander Girard and Charles and Ray Eames. (See older post about Neuhart's latest book, The Story of Eames Furniture.) The folk art style dolls were originally sold at Girard's Textiles & Objects Shop in New York City in the early 1960s. New printed dolls sell for $100, new embroidered dolls for $800 and vintage embroidered dolls for $1200 and up.

Marilyn Neuhart was born in Long Beach, California, and attended Long Beach public schools, Long Beach City College and UCLA. She has been a freelance designer in the Los Angeles area since her graduation from the university. She has taught design, painting and color theory at UCLA and UCLA Extension and at East Los Angeles Junior College. She and her husband John have worked together professionally since their marriage and have collaborated on numerous design projects, including graphics, films and exhibitions. From 1980 to 1998 they were partners in the design firm Neuhart Donges Neuhart, whose clients included the IBM Corporation, Herman Miller, Inc., The Huntington Library and Art Gallery, the Doheny Library, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Government of Taiwan and local businesses and institutions. The Neuharts continue to work together in their office in El Segundo.

Neuhart says about her sewing:

I started to quilt when I was a small child sitting with my mother and my aunts over a quilting frame. I continued to sew, albeit intermittently, as I went through high school and college. After I left teaching for a period and with two small children, I became a fulltime freelance graphic designer and once again took up my needle in earnest. After making small cloth dolls for my children and friends, I made a doll for designer Alexander Girard, who asked me to make a large number of them the new Textiles & Objects shop he was designing in New York City for the Herman Miller Furniture Company. Over the next few years (in the early 1960's), I made nearly 2,000 dolls for the shop and for Girard's exhibition projects. And I am still sewing and quilting. 

Text and images from maximodesign.com 

New printed Benny Casa

New Billy Cat

New Angel Geneva

New Mermaid Meryl

Vintage stripe

Vintage jester

Vintage centaur