exhibition

Yaron Gayer lives in Yaziz, about half an hour from Tel Aviv, and he’s the gentleman who adopted the Mayer doll I wrote about last week. Yaron has a large collection of these vintage & retro plastic dolls, and one of the few folks with the story on the Mayer company which made these dolls.

When did you first discover Mayer dolls?

Four years ago, while walking around in the flea market in Jaffa, I saw two lovely rubber dolls. One of a boy playing the guitar and the other of a sweet girl eating a water melon. I was captured by the two cute dolls and bought them.

Have you always collected dolls, or are the Mayer dolls your first/only doll collection? Do you collect anything else?

I collect all Israeliana, especially children’s toys and games, but any Israeli product that was manufactured in Israel before the establishing of the state and until the 70’s and has special local character is important to me.

What about these Mayer dolls captured you and made you collect them?

The dolls were stamped “Mayer Pat. Pend” and as soon as I got home I tried to look it up in the Internet, out of curiosity. I guessed that the dolls were made in USA or Germany, but could not find any information.

I kept on looking for six months with no luck until I met with a man who surprisingly knew about the dolls. He told me that the Mayer company was located in Israel. This information set me on a wonderful journey through time to Israel in the 50’s and 60’s.

I have gone to a lot of trouble to find any information possible about the Mayer company since no one knew almost anything about it.

I managed to find some people who worked in the company with some information including the original catalogs of the company and some of the copper moulds used for making the dolls, and so was able to revive the wonderfull story of the Mayer doll factory.

As I told you, I know very little about the Mayer Company. What can you tell me about it?

In the early 50’s, the first years of the new state of Israel, the Mayer family built a big plastic manufacturing factory which employed 300 people. In 1954 the factory started a new department for manufacturing dolls which employed about 30 people.

The first dolls were of local types of people and animals and later on the dolls changed their looks into typical world wide dolls for children (mostly squeaking dolls). The factory manufactured the dolls up to 1964.

So the company only made dolls for 10 years… Did Mayer close completely in 1964, or just the doll division?

Only the doll division closed. The company kept on producing plastic products until three years ago when they sold their last line of production.

How many Mayer dolls do you own?

I have in my collection 150 different dolls which were made by Mayer. I know that hundreds of different dolls were made so the search will be long and fun.

It is very hard to find the dolls since they were made long time ago and people in Israel do not like to save things so most of them were lost many years ago.

What’s the ‘most’ you’ve ever done for a Mayer doll? (Highest amount paid, furthest you’ve gone to get one etc.)

Most of the dolls I buy in the flea markets of Tel Aviv, Jaffa and Haifa. In fact, the doll I have paid most for until now is the doll I have bought from you, which is special because this doll was manufactured in the first year of the factory.

The doll we are sending you, do you know his name? (I’d just love to call him something besides ‘the boy doll.’)

I am afraid not. Only the first few dolls were named and even though the boy is one of the dolls that were manufactured in the first year (I can tell from the type of material he is made of) I don’t know his name and didn’t even know he existed until now because he is not in the catalogs.

When I was researching I found most of the dolls that people had seen or knew about were the ’squeaky’ type, that they did not have fabric clothes, and were a bit smaller.

Can you describe what most of the Mayer dolls are like?

Most of the dolls were squeaky dolls, ranging from 4 to 8 inches.

The biggest dolls, which are not of the squeaky variety, are up to 16 inches.

Are there any other details or characteristics of the dolls that you can think of which would help folks identify or remember the dolls?

Sorry, no.

Are there any dolls in particular you are trying to find?

I have no specific dolls I am looking for, any new doll is a nice surprise — and since there were a few hundred different dolls manufactured, I am sure I will enjoy many new surprises in the years to come.

You mentioned you are working on a book about the Mayer company and the dolls, can you tell me what the book is about?

The book I am planning will be an exhibition catalog. At the moment I am organizing a future exhibition of the dolls and the story of the factory doll manufacturing department together with the Mayer family. The exhibition will take place in Tel Aviv and will be accompanied with this catalog which will include the complete story along with photos of the dolls.

The exhibition you are planning, do you have a date for it yet?

The exhibition has a gallery, but not a date yet. I will be having a meeting soon in order to determine that.

Do you know of any other collectors of Mayer dolls? If so, or in light of the exhibition, do you plan to start any sort of a collector’s club for Mayer dolls?

I know of a few people that collect Mayer dolls, but as part of their Israeliana collection. As far as I know, no one has a collection as big as mine.

I do not plan to start a collector’s club. As far as I am concerned, the day after the exhibition I will be happy to put the Mayer doll collection to the side and start another journey looking for other forgotten stories in the local Israeli past.

But I will be very happy if the exhibition will trigger other people to collect the dolls — and they could use the information I gathered for their own use, including collector clubs.

You mentioned you are looking for information on the American connections to these dolls. What sort of information do you seek?

All the company’s catalogs were made in English which is uncommon for Israel at that time, and all the dolls were stamped in English only (some were stamped “Made in Israel”) so it looks like the factory was aiming at international markets.

Also some of the dolls are identical to dolls that were sold in the United States under different brand names, so I was wondering if any of your readers had any information regarding this.
Most of the Mayer dolls which I see sold on eBay are with the brand name of an American company called Alan Jay. Also Bonnytex.

Here are some examples of dolls marked Alan Jay — the girl on the phone, holding a towel, and a little girl playing with makeup.
(And note that the girl in her pjs shown above while marked Mayer is much like the dolls shown here, which are not marked Mayer.)

Given the other company names on the dolls, is it possible that Mayer contracted to make dolls for other companies?

All the catalogs I could find are in English only. They read, and I quote, “Mayer produced the newest models in the field of soft vinyl pastic for the toy market,” and “Our technical and chemical know how in the field of plastics, and the best in raw material have perfected the superior quality of our toys.”

I can only guess that boasting of ‘new models’ means the company did not copy others — so the big question is did Mayer contract to manufacture dolls, under other names, to overseas clients?

So any of you toy and doll collectors out there, if you have any dolls, stories or memories of the dolls, or information on the company — especially information regarding the American companies connections to Mayer — contact Yaron.

You can contact him via email at yarongayer@hotmail.com.

You and your dolls can help with the exhibition and make sure that Mayer dolls are lovingly remembered, not lost to history.

Perhaps you resist the notion that as a collector you have your own museum. Maybe you (still) imagine that a museum must be significantly historical or be meaningful to society at large. But let me tell you, if other folks believed that their collection had no value, then we would be without the the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia, the Museum of Bad Art, the Cockroach Hall of Fame Museum, and the Lunchbox Museum. (The latter is recognized by the Smithsonian, yet!) Yet these and many other ’strange little museums’ have hundreds of visitors (or more) each year. Even if the number of visitors who would make a pilgrimage &/or pay to see your collection is a very small one, your collection does have merit and meaning.

Do you still think your collection is undesirable and uninteresting? Then ask yourself this: Do you have people bidding against you at auctions?

Yeah, I thought so. *wink*

See, your collection is interesting. You have a collection, you have a museum; that’s pretty clear-cut to me.

As with any museum, there is a curator: You. You are responsible for shaping and preserving the collection.

You may not have thought of yourself as a curator before, so let’s look at what one is.

The U.S. Department of Labor says, “Curators direct the acquisition, storage, and exhibition of collections, including negotiating and authorizing the purchase, sale, exchange, or loan of collections. They are also responsible for authenticating, evaluating, and categorizing the specimens in a collection. Curators oversee and help conduct the institution’s research projects and related educational programs. Today, an increasing part of a curator’s duties involves fundraising and promotion, which may include the writing and reviewing of grant proposals, journal articles, and publicity materials, as well as attendance at meetings, conventions, and civic events.”

This boils down to three rather natural steps for most collectors.

Step One: Acquisition
This is rather simple; it’s the collecting part. In the process of adding pieces to your collection you automatically authenticate and evaluate items to see what pieces are worth your investment. Like any museum, you have a budget which prevents you from having it all. Sometimes you get lucky; you can afford it, so you buy it. Sometimes though, you want it, want it bad, but it’s too expensive. So then you have to save funds as you watch and wait for another like it — or you may may get more creative. You might arrange a trade for other items in your collection, take out a loan (even if it is just from your spouse), or make payments over time. ‘Real museums’ do this too, only they call it negotiating an exchange, finding a benefactor, or fundraising.

Step Two: Storage and Display
Like any other museum curator you worry about how to best show off your collection. Not only should the items be shown to their best advantage, but done so in a way which does not harm them. Depending upon your particular collection this may be as simple as keeping them out of reach of small children or as challenging as shielding the items from the environment at large. Protecting items may mean higher shelves; protective cases, sleeves, or framing; or even storing them out of sight so that they live to see another decade. Sometimes even the best curators at the largest museums will have to pass on a piece simply because they do not have the room or the ability to properly store the item.

Step Three: Exhibition and Education
The more committed you are to your collection, the more knowledge you gain. The more passionate you are about your collection, the more you want to share both your knowledge and your collection. Through this you become an expert. You don’t have to be collecting something for 25 years in order to be an expert. Maybe your collection is a very unique set of items. (It need not be due to the rarity of the items themselves, but in their context to one another.) Or maybe your collection is so specific & limited that it requires you to be an expert in some small niche area. But one way or another, collecting eventually leads to the collector, the curator, becoming an expert.

As an expert you may be asked to share your collection in a more public venue. It may be a casual exhibit at a Scout meeting or local library, or a more prestigious event at an art gallery or state historical society. Now you are “loaning your acquisitions.” It might be that you are asked to write a paper for your collecting newsletter, share photos of your collection in an author’s book, speak at a local collectibles show, or help evaluate items in an estate. Now you are a curator “promoting” the collection.

Of course, being out in the public means you are also more visible to others, making acquisitions even easier. And the circle continues…

See? You’ve been acting as a curator of your own museum for quite some time now.