Beginning in the 1940s, Swiss artist Sasha Morgenthaler, a formally trained protégé of painter Paul Klee, chose dollmaking as her favorite medium for expression. A humanitarian married to fellow artist Ernest Morgenthaler, Sasha traveled the world, interacting with children from a wide variety of cultures and races. These kids became the inspiration for her art—20-inch, one-of-a-kind dolls made out of cloth, gypsum, and plastic.

Her handmade dolls, which she made until her death in 1975, were sold in Switzerland through her studio and the Heimatwerk shops, and in the United States at Marshall Field & Co. But even the handmade dolls she intended as playthings were just too expensive for most families. Morgenthaler dreamed of producing an affordable doll that would appeal to all children. In the mid-1960s she made that happen with Sasha.

Sasha was a 16-inch hard vinyl doll produced by Götz-Puppenfabrik in Germany (1965-1970 and 1995-2001) and Trendon Ltd. in England (1966-1986). These quarter-scale dolls, which w...ere sold all over the world, had distinguishing stylized facial features and realistically proportioned asymmetrical body parts. Their feet were flat, which allowed them to stand on their own. In fact, they were so well-balanced, they could even stand on their heads.