The fabric of cloth dolls exists for a very long time but, the fabric being a very perishable material, the first specimens of artisanal manufacture preserved in collections today date only from XIXe and are primarily of American manufacture. In Europe the fashion for the cloth dolls fabric rather developed at the beginning of the XXe century with the awakening by exceptional women that the traditional dolls of porcelain and composition did not correspond completely to waitings of the children and thus did not support tenderness, the comfort and the maternal instinct contrary to a fabric dolls, softer, more flexible and lighter. Parallel to the revival of material , the dolls also moved in the form with appearance of the "Bébé de caractère ", very expressive, and of the babies with bent members. These famous women, among who are distinguished Käthe Kruse, Dora Petzold, Margarete Steiff in Germany, Elena König Scavani in Italy, Norah Wellings in England, Louise Kampes in the United States, started by producing artisanal fabric dolls for their children before launching out, toward the request growing, in the industrial production.

Between the two wars, much enterprises launched out in these "artistic dolls" such as names them in the "Catalogues d'Etrennes", because of the artistic look of their painted face and their decorative role in the interiors Art Nouveaux and especially Arts Déco. They are besides often the same manufacturers who realize according to similar techniques, the dolls toy and the boudoir dolls who have a purely decorative objective.

In France, companies of average and big size developed between the two wars; the principal ones are Raynal, Venus, Emile Lang, Pintel, Ravca, Magali, the SFBJ, Clelia, Gerb's, Nicette, Cottin.

After the second world war, in spite of the appearance of the new plastics, some manufacturers continued to work fabric, for example Reine Degrais for Bécassine in France or Georgene Novelties in the USA.