According to Pat Henry, publisher of Fashion Doll Quarterly magazine and a book about Tonner, “Robert Tonner is one of the most influential doll designers of all time.” 

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He started off as a fashion designer eventually working for Blassport  for Bill Blass, but is best known for the creation of the Tonner Doll Company, Wilde Imagination and most recently, Phyn & Aero, a collaboration with Andrew Yang.

 

Tonner’s original doll lines, Tyler Wentworth, Antoinette, Cami and Jon, Ellowyne Wilde, DejaVu and Kitty Collier have won world-wide acclaim and the Tonner Doll Company has also been granted licenses to market doll designs for contemporary films such as Harry Potter, Spider-Man, Wizard of Oz, Pirates of the Caribbean and Avatar. 

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Tonner launched Robert Tonner Doll Design (RTDD) in 1991 with his partner Harris Safier. The first RTDD designs were introduced at the American International Toy Fair that same year. Backed by past connections within the NIADA and fashion design world, and the aggressive publicizing by Tonner’s partner Harris, RTDD saw exponential growth within the first few years. In 2000, RTDD was renamed Tonner Doll Company, Inc.  In 2006, Robert Tonner created the direct-marketing company, Wilde Imagination, which built a collectible fashion doll design business based on Tonner’s fictional character, Ellowyne Wilde. Wilde Imagination expanded  with new collections featuring Evangeline Ghastly and Sad Sally and licensed pop-culture dolls based on The Wizard of Oz film.  In 2007, the Tonner Company acquired the Effanbee Doll Company and added new designs while honoring Effanbee standards such as Brenda Starr.  Mr. Tonner’s latest acquisition is the NancyAnn Storybook Dolls which we will be featuring at our Conference.

Mr. Tonner has received numerous national and international artistic awards and recognitions including a permanent piece at The Louvre Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. He joined the National Institute of American Doll Artists (NIADA) and served as Standards Chairman from 1991–1995 and was later elected President of NIADA 1995, a post which he held until 1997.

For all his accomplishments, Mr. Tonner’s highest praise seems to come from fellow designers who say he has elevated doll making, and marketing, to an art.  “He’s like Steve Jobs; he has that innovative spirit,” says Helen Kish, our souvenir doll artist, who describes Tonner’s dolls as “objects of beauty.’

“He’s not only a fantastic sculptor and awesome clothing designer, he’s also a great businessman. He has his pulse on what people need, and he’s right there to give it to them, even if they don’t know it yet.”