Izannah Walker

She received one of the earliest patents for doll construction, and was also a skilled carpenter, the designer of a parlor heater, and, according to historian Autumn Stanley, a "jill of all trades."

Her niece remembered: "Family tradition tells of her struggle to perfect her work and of the long wrestling with one problem, how to obtain a resistant surface to the stockinette heads, arms, and legs, without racking or peeling.

With this problem on her mind, Aunt Izannah suddenly sat up in bed one night to hear a voice say 'use paste.'

They have, according to The Strong National Museum of Play, "distinctive and sweet doll faces that some folk-art specialists suggest resemble the primitive portraiture of 19th century New England artists.

Kathy Duncan argues that she probably employed several people to make dolls, including her partner Emeline Whipple, and possibly her aunt and sister.

In 1881, Billings noted that he had "a stock of Miss Walker's cloth dolls this season, their chief merit consisting in their ability to stand rough usage and abandonment serenely.

"[7] She claimed that a doll manufactured using her patent "is inexpensive, easily kept clean, and not apt to injure a young child which may fall upon it.

It will preserve its appearance for a long time, as the soft secondary stuffing under the stockinet or external webbing enables it to give under pressure, so that the oil paint will not scale off.

At the same time the inner and more compact stutting prevents ordinary pressure from forcing the surface in to such an extent as to crack the paint.