Thelma Resch was born in New Kensington, a small town near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1924. Her mother made all of their clothes and her grandmother made quilts from scraps of fabric. Thelma would spend hours cutting out little pieces of material for her grandmother to piece together. During the depression, there was little money for toys, but Thelma managed to make toys out of everyday household items.
Josephine	No Title	Goldilocks

"I loved the paper dolls from McCall's magazine. I used scraps of fabric to make clothes, feathers from pillows to make hats and muffs, and my doll house and furniture was made from cardboard," Thelma recalled. Thelma was sculpting her own dolls at the age of five. She would make dolls and animals for her dollhouse from cakes of soap.

On Thelma's eleventh birthday, she received the bookL"Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott. She fell in love with the long, flowing dresses and capes that the characters wore and copied the designs for her paper dolls. The influence of this book and era can be distinctly seen in her exquisite fashion dolls costumed with intricate dresses and ornate hats.

Thelma was recognized for her artistic talents as she won awards in school for her art and took as many elective courses as were available at the time. However, art was not a popular vocation in those days. Thelma's talent would not fully manifest itself until many years later.

Thelma's childhood sweetheart, Louie Resch, her husband, best friend and confidant, would later become her partner in the doll business. They had four wonderful children:  Gary, Diane, Judy and Barbara Sue.

In the early 1960's, Thelma took her creations from the home to the marketplace as she began attending craft shows selling cloth dolls, apple head dolls and stuffed toys. In 1969 she took a course in doll repair, bought a kiln and began making replacement parts for porcelain dolls. "I found someone to show me the basics of firing a kiln and china painting, and from that day on I have never stopped making dolls," said Thelma. Making full antique reproduction dolls soon followed. There was little information available at the time, so she spent much time reading everything she could find and taking as many classes as were available on china painting.

She soon learned the basics of sculpting. Her early dolls were always inspirations from her family and portraits of famous people. For one of Thelma's first sculptures, "Daisy and Gary", Thelma used her mother and her son as models. She then went on to create sculptures of her daughters and grandchildren as well.

Thelma also had a passion to sculpt a fashion doll so that she could design clothes like the ones she remembered from Little Women. Thelma created "Evelyn" which was inspired from a photo of Evelyn Nesbit in the local newspaper, She was a model for Charles Dayna Gibson - one of the famous Gibson Girls. Thelma won the International Doll Makers Association 1982 Silver Award for Evelyn. For these limited editions, Thelma wanted to do everything herself so it would be a true original. The only help she had was from Louie, who poured and cleaned the porcelain and handled the business, and their daughter, Judy, who is an excellent seamstress. Judy made all of the clothes after Thelma chose the material and designed the clothing,

"Tea With Alice" turned out to be one of their most popular dolls. Alice was a 1993 DOTY nominee and appeared on the cover of Doll Reader.   She recieved the 1993 Dolls Award of Excellance for her doll, "Mary Catherine", and in 1994 both the DOTY and IDEX awards were presented for "Josephine". Other storybook dolls include Cinderella, Sleeping beauty, Little Red Riding Hood and in 1994 she created "Goldilocks".

So many doll makers asked her if they would create molds for some of the fashion dolls. "At the time, there were very few lady dolls available, so mine were quite popular. That's how our mold business began," Thelma said. Largely due to the incredible success of Evelyn, Thelma and Louie soon found themselves catapulted into the mold business. Thelma sculpted and produced molds of her fashion dolls and children.

Thelma has achieved incredible success as a doll artist as she had a booming business and over a dozen top awards for her dolls: Doty Awards on several occasions, IDEX awards, IDMA awards and "Dolls of Excellence Awards". Thelma's dolls are mainly family portraits and replicas of paintings. Allof her original dolls are porcelain head and limbs on a cloth body with flexible sheleton armatures. Eyes are painted or are glass paperweight.

Thelma continues to be inspired by design books from the Victorian era, her recent visit to Europe and sometimes just a face of a child that displays the sweetness and innocence that she loves to capture in her sculptures. "Naturally, I will always be making some sort of doll. It is like breathing."