Wendy Lawton, who as a child loved more than anything to play with dolls, came by her calling earlier than most. "Because my mother collected dolls, I always had a shelf lined with dolls," she says.

Growing up in San Francisco, Wendy and her younger sister Linda looked forward to Christmas each year?to give and receive?and their annual trek with their mother to the fire station that collected Toys for Tots. The girls knew each year they would find two new dolls under their own tree.

In anticipation of their new dolls?and of the trip to the fire station?the girls spent hours surrounded by boxes of clothes and hair ornaments, putting together the perfect outfits, preparing their dolls for a new home in another little girl's heart.

"My sister and I liked to sew so we specialized in adding all kinds of trimming. Now I look back and wonder what the recipients thought of those overdone dolls!" Wendy says ruefully. But if one of those dolls could be found today, it would be snatched up in a heartbeat by a savvy collector. Nowadays the porcelain dolls sculpted by Wendy and handmade at her factory in Turlock, California, sell for hundreds, even thousands of dollars. Lawton Dolls have been nominated for 61 industry awards and have won nine Doll of the Year Awards as well as three Dolls of Excellence. Collectors eagerly await Wendy's new creations and travel for miles to hear her tell the stories behind them and to have her autograph them.

"My first doll award came 40 years ago when I was 10 years old. We had just moved across the Bay and I entered the Union City Rec Center contest. I won first place for the biggest doll. Not the prettiest, or best-dressed, but the biggest. Now that's humbling for someone who loved dolls the way I did!

"I received my first Barbie doll at 13 years old, and spent years collecting clothes. My sister and I designed hats for Barbie, selling enough of them to get money for our mom's Christmas present. I never outgrew my passion. When I got my first job at 18, I spent my first paycheck on a Furga doll from Italy that I spotted in a Montgomery Ward catalog."

At San Jose State College, Wendy majored in home economics and minored in art. She designed and sold her first doll in 1979, based on a portrait of her daughter Rebecca.

"It was a pretty ugly doll. Not because my daughter was ugly," she laughs. "I had limited skills at that point." Recently, that ugly doll caused a bidding flurry on e-Bay for its rarity?sold to a fortunate collector for approximately $750.

"A typical collector of my dolls is around 58 years old, a grandmother, well-educated," says Wendy. But Lawton Dolls are not for display only; Wendy hopes they'll be loved and played with. The current promotional slogan for the company, "It's never too late to give yourself a happy childhood," says it all.

"About four years ago, I started making travel dolls. Travel dolls have been around since Victorian times. Each comes with a trunk and a travel book. A girl would take her travel doll with her whenever she went away. She'd make a special dress for the doll to represent where they had been and write about the trip in her book. The doll became autobiographical. It told the story of her life."

Many Lawton Doll collectors now carry those dolls with them on their journeys.

Over two decades, Wendy has made more than 300 dolls. Typically, she reads a piece of literature or researches a country's customs, and is inspired to create a doll.

"In the quiet, solitary act of reading," Wendy explains, "the story begins to come alive. The tale becomes so real, I can't bear to let it go. The doll that I create is my expression of this longing to make the story my own." Wendy admits that her favorite doll over the years is her depiction of Anne of Green Gables because she loved the character so much.

Wendy's initial sculpt?the actual modeling of the doll's features?is followed by a 12-hour design session in San Francisco (a two-hour drive) with the dressmakers she has worked with for 20 years?Betty Rodriguez and Mary Martin.