Vivian "Viv" Trillow Smith is best known as the artist who designed the popular Dolls from the Land of Make Believe and Dolls of the Nations series published in 1947 and 1948. Her "This is ... A Hallmark Paper Doll" series of the fifties, highlighted here, is also well-known among paper doll collectors. But those paper doll cards are only a very small fraction of her work. An immensely prolific and versatile artist who worked at Hallmark from 1924 through 1970, she was reported (by the Christian Science Monitor in 1948) to have designed an average of 250 cards per year, or about one per work day. If the estimate is accurate, that would mean a lifetime output of about 11,500 cards. Even if her later output was lower in many years, 5,000 is probably a conservative number.

Besides the doll cards and paper doll cards for which she is best remembered, she was also a master of humorous illustrations, lettering, babies and animals - especially cats and rabbits. Some other Viv items on this web site are the Hallmark May Baskets, the Dancing Debbie and Wee Willie gift wrap, a 1957 pinup calendar, a birthday card that I restored for my dad's 83rd birthday, another card in honor of my mom's 75th birthday, and a Valentine's Day card for my boyfriend.

On July 1, 2010 I exhibited over 400 items from my Viv Smith collection at the 2010 Paper Doll Convention in Kansas City, Missouri. Here are some links to Facebook photo albums from that exhibit:

Photos taken at the actual exhibit

Close up photos of some of the popup items

My visit to the Hallmark Visitor Center (emphasis on Viv's items shown there)

And more Facebook albums containing card scans:

"A Little Bit of Heaven" (baby and angel cards)

Mother's Day card featuring cats

St. Patrick's Day cards

Meet Miss Ballerina

(I hope to put these on the web site someday, but it's easier to make a photo album than to format a web page. It gives you much less control over the presentation, though.)

On June 23, 2016 I also gave a presentation about Vivian at the 2016 Paper Doll Convention in Phoenix, Arizona. Here is a PDF file of the 135 slides from that talk. It is 155 MB, which is too big to display on most mobile devices, so you should be on a regular computer when clicking the link. Also, web browsers typically display all the pages of a PDF in a single browser window at once, stacked vertically, so to view the pages one at a time like a slide show with the arrow keys, you should download the PDF file to your computer using the Save As command, and then open it in Adobe Acrobat or any other PDF viewer. The slides are not annotated, so I've put together a text script (also in PDF format) to accompany it.

Later "This is ..." and "Here's ..." paper doll cards

Most of the cards also came in multiple variations and in Ambassador reprints, sometimes with only a change of caption, sometimes with costumes recolored. When a card below is shown with two stock numbers, the first number is for the one pictured, and the others are for variations. (Mary Jane with the red dress and Sparkle with the red tights are probably by a different artist, but are included here to complete the set of Hallmark paper dolls.)

Cards with heavy colored borders are on this web site; click to view.

Some of these images were sent to me by other collectors or pulled from auctions I lost. I am still seeking copies of the redheaded Madeline, Cathy & Bill (wedding card), Laurie, and Mary Jane.

If you have any of the cards I am missing, or any color variations not shown above, please contact me at terikpettit@gmail.com, or through Facebook via the album links above. (Even if you have only one copy and you don't want to sell it, for all of the cards listed in the prior paragraph except Laurie I need at least better scans.)

Non-card paper doll sets and non-paper doll toy cards (walking dolls, standing cone dolls, etc.)