Morton Bartlett

1909 - 1992

When Morton Bartlett died at the age of 83, relatives found 15 wooden boxes in his house in Boston, Massachusetts containing half-size dolls – twelve girls and three boys – with hand-sewn clothes, black-and-white photographs of the dolls as well as study and archival material.

Bartlett was born in 1909, in Chicago. At age eight he was orphaned and spent some time in an orphanage until a Boston couple adopted him. After graduating from high school, he studied fine arts at Harvard University where he dropped out of the program after two years in order to work as a freelance advertising photographer. Health issues arising from working in the darkroom forced him to give up his profession. Following service in the US Army in WWII, Bartlett became a publisher and established a design agency and printing business.

In 1936, Bartlett began to design dolls of children and teenagers between the ages of eight and sixteen. In order to render them as realistically as possible, he studied books on anatomy and the history of costume, and learned sewing and to modeling with clay. He was also interested in photographing his dolls, not as documentary images but rather in carefully staged scenes of various moments and real life situations. He worked with light and shadow, varying costumes and backdrops.

Bartlett works remained unnoticed for a long time. In 1962, he allowed his goddaughter's husband, a journalist, a glimpse into his realm. His article in Yankee Magazine, in 1962, caused a sensation. He seemed to have enjoyed the interest of some of the readers, who wrote him.

Bartlett died in 1992.

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