A Depression-era hobby became a Lakes Region business.

Annalee is a maker of felt dolls based in Meredith, New Hampshire, on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee. English Wikipedia says the company, also known as Annalee Mobilitee Dolls Inc., was founded by Barbara Annalee Davis, later Annalee Thorndike. The company presents itself as “A New Hampshire Tradition Since 1934”, and its history page describes a young woman dyeing felt and painting doll faces freehand during the Depression. Wikipedia says she began selling her dolls in the early 1930s through the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, and later sold them in Boston, notably to S.S. Pierce and Co.

The business took its lasting shape after the Second World War. Wikipedia says that in 1941 she met Charles “Chip” Thorndike, and that after they married the couple moved to Meredith, where they ran a poultry farm until 1950. When that venture ended, it says, they sold part of the farm and used the proceeds to make a small line of skier dolls, which sold well. The company tells the same story in its own words: the old chicken coop became a design room, Chip became the salesman, and Annalee became the doll maker, basing figures on her two sons’ pastimes such as skiing and swimming.

Wikipedia dates the formal company to 1955, when Annalee Mobilitee Dolls was incorporated. The company’s 1934 date refers to the first dolls rather than the incorporation, so the two dates describe different starting points.

Felt, wire and a painted smile.

The product has stayed recognisable across the decades. Wikipedia describes Annalee dolls as bendable, felt-bodied dolls with a painted face, ranging in height from a few inches to several feet, the larger ones generally used as store displays. In the early years, it says, Chip Thorndike made the wire frame inside each doll and small wooden props such as skis and boats, while Annalee sewed and painted the rest. The company quotes her on the feature that ties the range together: “It’s the ‘positive-ness’ of the face. It’s the smile. If you smile, someone else has got to smile back.”

The subjects followed the calendar and the family. The company says the 1950s and 1960s focused on human figures doing everyday things, arranged by occupation, sport and hobby, with some animals added; that the 1970s were built around “The Mouse for Every House”, mice with several facial expressions in many roles; and that the 1980s began what it calls the collectability era, with Santa, mice, elves and animals at the core of holiday and seasonal lines. Through these decades, it says, a small staff worked from the Thorndikes’ home and from their own homes, a homeworker model that lasted until 2001.

Public display helped spread the name. Wikipedia says that in the 1950s department stores in Manchester and Boston bought Annalee dolls to dress their windows, and that the state of New Hampshire hired Annalee to make dolls for tourism material, shown at the Eastern States Exposition in Springfield, Massachusetts, and at Rockefeller Center in New York. It says production outgrew the family house in 1964 and moved into what became known as the “Factory in the Woods”, which later also housed a museum and gift shop. In 1975, Wikipedia says, a New Hampshire state legislator gave President Gerald Ford a selection of the dolls for the White House Christmas tree.

For collectors, the label matters. Wikipedia says that from 1986 the label sewn into each Annalee doll included the year the doll was made, and in 1990, it says, the company sponsored the headgear of a United States Ski Team member, putting the Annalee logo on his helmets and hats.

Design and documentation.

Figurine and collectable brands work with a small object and a long memory. A piece may be cast in porcelain, moulded in resin, carved from wood or shaped in felt, and it is usually made to be kept, displayed and added to rather than used up. That gives the brand behind it an unusual job: its name has to live on the underside of the piece as well as on a shop shelf.

Much of the identity of a collectable is carried by marks rather than advertising: a backstamp or base mark, a signature or sculptor’s credit, a dated series name, a box and a catalogue. Collectors use those details to tell one period or one workshop from another, so the way a maker marks its pieces can matter as much as the figure itself. The company behind a name may also have changed owners, moved its studio or changed where its pieces are made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its pieces are made and how its marks have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From a family firm to new owners, still in Meredith.

The company passed through the family and then out of it. Wikipedia says that in 1992 the Thorndikes gave shares in the business to their sons, Townsend and Charles, and that in 1995 Charles took control of everyday operations. In 2001, it says, the making of dolls and other collectibles moved overseas, while the design and marketing departments stayed in Meredith.

A change of ownership followed. Wikipedia says that in 2008, Annalee Dolls was acquired by David Pelletier, Bob Watson and the Imagine Company of Hong Kong, the firm that builds the dolls. The same year, it says, the company sold the Factory in the Woods site to the Winnipesaukee Playhouse, auctioned a selection of pieces from its museum and moved the museum online.

The current arrangement keeps the creative work local. Wikipedia says the dolls are now designed by a team in Meredith who draw on Annalee’s earlier dolls, then built by the Imagine Company in Hong Kong and shipped back to New Hampshire for distribution. It quotes Pelletier, then chief executive, saying there was value “in terms of continuity of identity in remaining in Meredith”. Wikipedia says the company moved to its present site on Daniel Webster Highway in Meredith in 2016, and the company’s website, which names Annalee Dolls LLC in its copyright line, describes a gift shop there that welcomes visitors to the Lakes Region.

For a design guide, Annalee shows how a single face can carry a brand: a felt body, a painted smile and a dated label, repeated across skiers, mice, elves and Santas for decades, with the founder’s first name as the mark. Compare hand-made Pennsylvania caroler figures in our Byers’ Choice brand guidelines and a holiday village brand in our Department 56 brand guidelines. For this guide we use felt red, lakes green and mustard felt with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Annalee’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.