Mary Hoyer

Born in 1901, Mary Hoyer was an American designer and writer whose name became closely linked with dolls, doll fashions, and needlework. Reliable sources connect her with Pennsylvania, especially Reading, where her business grew from a craft and yarn shop into the Mary Hoyer Doll Company.

Hoyer also wrote pattern and craft books. Project Gutenberg lists Juvenile Styles: Original Designs for Infants and Juveniles, Volume 4 under her name, and library records show Mary Hoyer and Her Dolls, a later book tied to her doll designs and clothing patterns.

What makes her especially memorable is the way her books and products seem to meet in the same place: she was not only making things to be admired, but giving readers patterns and ideas to make things for themselves. She died in 2003, after a remarkably long life that spanned more than a century of American craft culture.