Steffie

"The head was supposed to be Miss America among other things. I used all the skills of lip perfection I had just recently learned from Joyce, who had been my supervisor for the previous two years. Steffie, Kelley, P.J., or whatever she was called then, had a mouth without a broad smile, and that fact gave her the opportunity--with different eye painting and hair--to be a stand-in whenever an extra female body was needed for Barbie activities. For example, behind a McDonald stand, behind the counter in the beauty shop, by the pool, at a wedding, or just for a good party to show off lavish clothes." Martha Armstrong Hand - Doll Reader, February 1998 That was "Steffie's Mom" talking about one of her most popular creations in her 20 years of work for Mattel. Joyce Christopher, her supervisor and mentor at Mattel was initially going to do the project but she fell ill and Martha took it. The story of Martha at Mattel began in an artist list at Disney Studios from where she was picked by a Mattel Art Director to sculpt the head of Chatty Cathy in 1960 as a test. She didn't enter at Mattel but they payed her for the work and in 1963 Mattel hired her not as sculptor but as a face designer... "I designed, that is painted, the faces of Midge, Skipper, Tutti and Todd, Francie, and of course my own Rickie as well as Ken's friend Alan and Skipper's friend Skooter" She went from face designer to sculptor when Ruth Handler choose her sculpt of Baby Pat'a Burp after a massive amount of non convincing sculptures on the sculpture departments part and was prolific on it. A certain amount of babies and Liddle Kiddles were sculpted before her hiatus from mattel in 1967. After her hiatus, aside of Steffie, she resculpted and adapted a work that she had been "baking" on her absence, the Sunshine Family and finished a project that lasted 6 years and that would be part of the Family Heart, the RosebudBabies. Eventually she became external consultant with a contract for Mattel in order to have more time for her own art work, arrangement that lasted until almost the 80s leaving an entire legacy at Mattel from the 70s to nowadays when the Steffie facemold is still used.