Maragret Hoag photo thanks to David Hoag

Margaret Hoag's listing in the NIADA book "Art of The Doll" is illustrated with a tiny black and white photo of a really cute doll holding an appropriately tiny doll. This is her doll #119 "Meg and Meggy" from 1970. She is listed in the back of this book where the other inactive and deceased NIADA artists were listed.  I was keenly interested in seeing some more photos of her wooden dolls, so I started to ask a lot of different people about her. I was distressed when I learned that so few people knew anything at all about Margaret Hoag. Even fewer people had seen any of her work, and there were only 4 aging slides in the NIADA archive to represent her. It seemed to me as if Margaret Hoag was being forgotten.  Jodi Creager (NIADA artist) recently reassured me that Margaret has not been forgotten in NIADA: "Her tragic and untimely death has done nothing to diminish the talent in the eyes of NIADA members... Margaret is not forgotten .... I have heard several of the older members of NIADA talk about her and her work ... and they are really good at keeping the memory of past members alive in the hearts of all the New Members."

I was finally able to find Margaret's family thanks to an email to Jean Grout, the UFDC regional director for Vermont. Jean contacted Ruth Morrow who is a long time member of Green Mountain Doll Club and a friend of Margaret Hoag. Ruth supplied the address of Margaret's son, David. David Hoag has been an enormous help. Luckily David is very computer literate and was able to send digital copies of each photograph in his mom's doll file.

Margaret Hoag was affectionately nicknamed "Muggy" by her four sisters and half-brother. She graduated from the University of Vermont in 1938 (Phi Beta Kappa) then taught school in Danville, Vermont. She became a homemaker after her 1940 marriage to a Grand Isle, Vt. dairy farmer. She had 2 children: Hazel in 1942, and David in 1944. I was glad that portraits were included in the slides on loan from the NIADA archives and from David Hoag's photo collection. Margaret Hoag was an attactive young woman with a really sweet smile.

Creative efforts in various arts and crafts were always a very important aspect of her life. She was mostly a self-taught artist who readily shared her knowledge and creativity with others. She eventually studied painting at the University of Vermont and she also attended a pottery class. She was a cofounder of a 4 or 5 member, painting club. She enjoyed embroidery & hooking rugs (from her original designs), oil painting (brush & knife - initially realistic, later including impressionistic and modern art), watercolor, pastel, and scratchboard. She also excelled at crafts such as chair caning, antique restoration, refinishing (including restoration of metallic paint detail), and picture frame detailing. She also enjoyed decoupage, making doll furniture, and sewing.

About Margaret Hoag's Dolls

Margaret Hoag made 34 wooden dolls (35 if you also count the little wooden doll held by her doll, Meg, #119). Every doll was a one of a kind carved from butternut wood using 1/8” hardwood dowels to connect the joints.  Margaret found that butternut wood was soft enough to carve with Xacto® knives (kept sharp by frequent stropping) after the wood was first roughed out to size using a band saw. Butternut has a very obvious grain pattern, which is not an issue if the wood is painted as Margaret initially did.
 

#101 and #102 Margaret's first wooden dolls made from a McCall's pattern #104 "Lisa" Margaret's first original design It was also much more realistic

Margaret Hoag's interest in making dolls started from creating fine, hand-sewn, doll costumes for Barbie® dolls and such.  Like so many other wooden doll artists, Margaret was inspired to sculpt a 14” wooden doll based on the pattern printed in the 1964 special issue magazine, “McCall’s Needlework & Crafts Annual”. This pattern gave complete instructions to make an antique reproduction of a “Tuck Comb” which is a nicely jointed, painted, wooden doll.  The traditional "Tuck Comb" doll pattern is a lathe turned pattern design which results in a top heavy head with a small chin. McCall's gave instructions on how to round each part on a lathe, how to remove excess wood and then how to carve the face details. Simple instructions were also given to those without a lathe on how to emulate this look as Margaret did. The chest and hip areas of the McCall's doll are very typical of lathe turned doll patterns. The front of the chest is the basically the same contour as it came off the lathe with no details and then the back is carved away a slight bit. The rear and hips follow the lathe turned contour and then the front is just cut away in a sharp angle - a quick way to flatten the stomach area, and to give adequate clearance for upward leg movements. Legs fit into the hip area with tougue and groove pegged joints.

Margaret’s first three dolls follow the McCall’s pattern closely. But her second and third dolls already show more fullness in the face. Her fourth doll (#104, “Lisa”) was much taller (20”) and remarkably different marking the start of her original doll art career. Lisa was carved from Margaret's totally original design and represented a much more modern, realistic female image. Lisa had glass doll eyes and a large wardrobe. She was meant to be “a sturdy doll for her guests' use”.

Margaret continued to study and experiment with wood finishes, eye treatments, human anatomy and jointing techniques throughout her carving career. Although the original McCall's doll pattern was well jointed, she continually refined her doll joints. By doll #105 her arms were very "Barbie®-like" while her hip shape, stomach area and hip joints were still very similar to the McCall's pattern. The photo of Buffy (#125) shows how her doll bodies completely evolved into her own original design. She was rightfully proud of the poseability of her wooden dolls.
 

early body (#105)

late body

Margaret Studied Antique Dolls

Margaret actively researched wooden doll history and had access to vast doll collections thanks to her UFDC membership in the Green Mountain Doll Club of Vermont. In appreciation, she painted some oil portraits of fellow club member’s favorite dolls as well as paintings of some of her own wooden dolls. Her aim was never to merely copy these antique dolls but to learn from them.

The impact of her study of antique dolls is seen in her original “historical dolls” and is particularly noticeable in Margaret’s 13.5” doll named “Bonnie” (#121) which was made in 1970 with embedded glass eyes and flax hair. This doll is reminiscent of some very unusual Victorian, wooden dolls which are elaborately dressed in assorted sea shells. Bonnie is dressed in a very detailed costume with a net and lace apron embellished with shells from the 100,000 year old “Lake Vermont”!
 

Margaret Hoag's "Shell Doll" - Bonnie #121

an antique china "Shell Doll" photo thanks to Theriault's

UFDC influence is clearly seen in the extent, style, and details of Margaret’s early wardrobes (complete with all the proper underpinnings); and the use of natural fibers, old material and lace. According to Mirren Barrie in the book “The Art of the Doll”, the flax used for Margaret’s doll hair had been grown and prepared on the Hoag farm in the late nineteenth century, and her doll’s costumes were made from old materials saved by generations of the Hoag family.

120 Hannah 15.5” - 1970

#121 Bonnie 13.5” - 1970

Margaret experimented with several eye treatments for her early dolls. She used painted pinheads or embedded glass beads for eyes like some of the finest, most desirable antique wooden dolls. Following the McCalls pattern instructions, Margaret gessoed and painted her early dolls in the traditional manner in such a way to completely hide the wood until 1971. Inspired by antique “wax over” dolls, Margaret also experimented with dipping wooden doll parts in wax (see #106).

Early painted doll group natural wood doll (#132) in modern dress

In 1971 her design focus suddenly returned to her first love, modern fashion dolls. Before this, her dolls’ torsos and hip joints had not changed much from her first modifications of the McCall’s pattern. Starting with doll #123, Margaret started to redesign the torso and other doll parts reflecting her human anatomy studies. She experimented with a rotating waist for doll #123 but didn't like it and returned to a fixed waist pattern for all later dolls. She also stopped embedding glass eyes. Instead eyes were carved and painted for a smaller, more realistic look. Her doll #124 (Marianne 14.5” 1971) was the first of her “natural wood dolls” where she left the very strong butternut wood grain fully exposed. Her early love of Barbie® again inspired her to create well jointed, fashion dolls with very long, full hair and voluptuous figures. These later natural wood dolls are reminiscent of her early dolls, #104 and #105, which were both dressed in very fancy modern fashions. But her later natural wood dolls were not dressed fancy at all - just in simple calico dresses. Margaret was putting more time and effort in perfecting her dolls at this point, rather than proving her seamstress skills.

128,127,129, 125
natural wood dolls in simple modern dresses

What caused this dramatic shift in her doll design and focus? Had she discovered the wonderful, natural wood look of Swiss souvenir dolls or Door of Hope Dolls? Or had she recently discovered the work of NIADA artists especially Helen Bullard and Frances Bringloe? Helen was the NIADA founder and a very active member of the UFDC. Helen’s dolls were also being left “natural” at about this time. Frances Bringloe became a NIADA member in 1971 and her very realistic dolls were carved from Alaskan cedar finished in such a way to enhance the wood grain. It is possible that Margaret met Frances who was a very sharing person profoundly interested in education, and perhaps she saw Frances’ fabulously carved and wonderfully jointed wooden dolls in person. This would have definitely made a major, immediate impact on Margaret at just the right time.

I believe that by late 1970, Margaret had been exposed to the work of NIADA artists and their ideas about what original doll artistry involved. At that point, Margaret wanted to make the best quality original design wooden dolls that she could possibly make, and I think she was already very determined to present her work to NIADA if she was successful in this goal.

Margaret Hoag and many of her fellow doll club members were extremely happy and bubbling with excitement as they traveled together via airplane to Louisville in 1973. They were on their way to the UFDC national convention and the NIADA new applicant review meeting. Margaret’s dolls were to be judged by the NIADA standards committee for likely acceptance into this prestigious doll organization! Margaret was so excited about this trip that she even tried to tease her good friend Ruth Morrow into coming along by saying, “But, Ruth, you’ll miss all of the fun!” Margaret and her doll club friends were bringing as many of Margaret’s dolls as they could handle. They wanted Margaret to put on a really good show of her work.

But as Mirren Barrie states in "The Art Of The Doll",  “As she had not arrived by voting time, we went ahead and she was unanimously accepted. We were to learn later that, at just about the same time as she was accepted, she died in a Boston air crash, and her dolls died with her. Those dolls that did not perish are, mostly, in the collections of the members of the Green Mountain Doll Club of Vermont, and of her family.”

Margaret Hoag's work abruptly ended just as she was just starting a period of drastic artistic evolution. We can only imagine the direction her work would have taken after more exposure to the work and encouragement of early NIADA artists.
 

Thank you NIADA, Jean Grout, Ruth Morrow, Mirren Barrie, and especially David Hoag. I hope our efforts here will bring Margaret's work and untimely loss into clear focus once again.