Written by and used with the permission of Susanna Lewis.

Sasha dolls were created by the late Sasha Morgenthaler (1893 - 1975), a Swiss artist and artisan.

She was also a humanitarian and a keen observer of all the world's children.
Her vision was to create dolls that represented and reflected the spirit of children of all races and cultures during their age of innocence.

Sasha had formal schooling in painting and sculpture, married the painter Ernst Morgenthaler, and was active in European artistic and social movements.
Beginning in the 1940s until her death in 1975, Sasha created one-of-a-kind 20" cloth, gypsum, and plastic dolls in her studio.

She travelled the world extensively, studying children of all racial, cultural, and economic groups to portray in her dolls. These dolls are considered museum-quality works of art, created by an artist who turned to doll-making to portray her vision.
                           
During her lifetime, Sasha's dolls were sold from her studio and through the Heimatwerk shops in Switzerland.
In the USA, Marshall Field & Co. in Chicago exhibited and sold her dolls.
                                                                                                                   
The dolls Sasha created for children to play with were too expensive for most families to afford.
Her dream was to make an inexpensive play doll that would have universal appeal for all children, that more families could afford to purchase for their children to play with.
Her dream came true in the mid 1960s when she developed the design for the 16" serie play-dolls.
These dolls were manufactured in Germany and England, and became very popular around the world during the 1960s - 1980s.
These serie dolls possess some unique features: they have beautifully stylized body parts that are in quarter scale, asymmetrical, and in realistic proportion, like real humans. They are perfectly balanced and can assume many poses without a doll stand - they can even stand on their heads! Their skin colorings are blends of all skin colorings, to represent all the children of the world, and they have individually hand painted faces with receptive expressions, each one ready to reflect whatever mood its child will give it.

There have been three productions of serie Sasha dolls, made by two different companies.

Götz-Puppenfabrik GmbH of Rödental, Germany made Sasha dolls from 1965 - 1970,
                                                                                                                        and again from 1995 - 2001.

Frido/Trendon/Sasha Dolls Ltd of Stockport, England made Sasha dolls from 1966 - 1986

The dolls from the three productions have similar vinyl bodies and heads, with rooted nylon hair and painted eyes and lips, but differ in style and face painting.
The German Sashas from both productions are marked on their backs and necks with the Sasha logo,

while the English dolls are unmarked.

All Sasha dolls wear wrist tags on their right wrists - a string with a little medallion bearing the Sasha logo.