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On a miniature operating table lay a struggling and very conscious patient, who while trying to push one doctor away, was being held down by another, the anesthetist. The third doctor was operating a brace and bit neatly aimed at the patient's mid-section. The miniature figures, about seven inches tall and sculptured from cotton, bore amazing resemblances to the persons being mimicked.

That was the beginning of cotton sculpturing for Mrs. Joanne Briggs, now of Salt Lake City; Utah. She had lain in a hospital bed for several months, occupying her time with such things as sketching, embroidering and applique work. One day, when she was particularly bored with the hospital, she began making a "wicked" sketch of three doctors, but when it was finished she found that it "just wasn't mean enough." After thinking it over she decided to make the doctors into little cotton men, and summoned John Hutchings, an electrician by trade, whose only title at the hospital seemed to be "genius," and asked for some wire to make the cotton men. These complete, they still weren't bad enough. Then she remembered the pink cotton slip she had been using to applique on a dish towel. It was a good flesh color. She covered the cotton men with this, taking pains to bring out characteristic features in each; then she dressed the miniatures authentically down to their small white operating gowns. The brace and bit and other props were furnished by Hutchings.

WHEN MRS. BRIGGS left the hospital she just couldn't leave her new hobby alone—and besides, she had some of the pink cotton slip left.

She began making little old-fashioned girls in pantaloons and boys in short pants. These dolls she distributed to antique shops, and at a price of $25 they "sold like mad." Her cut was $18.50, not bad for an enjoyable project that could be completed in three day's leisure time.

In the meantime, Mrs. Briggs had so many new ideas for her cotton sculpturing that she just had to get started on some of them. She first did a group scene of a young couple and their two children, friends of hers. She tried to get good likenesses and soon proof of her success came. Another friend from a town some fifty miles away dropped in, and upon seeing the mother in the group exclaimed: "Say, that looks exactly like a girl I used to go to school with." Comparison of names proved that it was.

Other groups followed. Usually they were the results of orders placed by admirers of her work, and these brought in tidy sums.

THEN CAME 1947, Utah's centennial year, and the whole atmosphere suggested the stout-of-heart pioneers who had entered Utah 100 years before. Mrs. Briggs was excited by it all and decided to try some pioneer replicas.

She wanted to do a couple square-dancing—something with lots of action—but this was a real challenge. She went to work, however, and came up with a real lively dancing couple, both laughing, the girl balanced on one foot with her skirt swirling.

"This group opened doors," says Mrs. Briggs. "I realized there wasn't anything I couldn't do with these little people." She had abandoned the word "doll" because her miniatures are authentic replicas and not mere dolls.

She made other pioneer scenes: One of a mother rocking a baby in a cradle; another mother scrubbing her offspring in a tiny wooden tub; a pioneer woman working a tall wooden churn; a scene of a pioneer mother and father pulling a handcart across the plains, with a baby in the cart and a little boy pushing; and her favorite, a pioneer family having dinner. In the latter a stern pioneer father with beard and long sideburns sits at the head of the table carving the fowl while a hardworking pioneer mother dishes the meal onto the table and a maternal-looking daughter of perhaps 7 watches over her younger brother.

At the insistence of her friends and husband, Mrs. Briggs entered these pioneer miniatures in the centennial year state fair and walked off with the grand prize for all arts and crafts. Her reward: $100.

PEOPLE BEGAN to hear about Joanne Briggs' interesting hobby, and many of them wanted to have her make particular figures for them. Some of these orders resulted from her prize-winning exhibit at the state fair, but mostly people became interested by hearing about her from a friend. Other than cooperating in giving out local newspaper features on her hobby, Mrs. Briggs has never undertaken any program for sales promotion.

Friends and acquaintances of Mrs. Briggs made up most of her first enthusiastic customers. While she was completing these orders, various friends of her first customers saw her completed figures and many of them placed orders, too. Thus the orders have been coming in steadily ever since, and she is seldom without enough orders to keep her happily busy on her fascinating hobby. She has even accepted orders by mail, and will continue to do so whenever the customer sends sufficient photographs of the subject.

Each order she fills brings in at least $100—this is the price for one figure and a piece of furniture. Groups and scenes are considerably more remunerative. Cost of materials is extremely low, but Mrs. Briggs often devotes a good deal of time to one project—up to six weeks on a scene such as the pioneer family eating dinner. Since she receives extremely good payment for her work and devotes many hours to one order, she is not concerned with volume. Occasionally she rents a group out for decoration at a banquet or some similar affair. Always she gets a flood of inquiries from persons who phone or drop in at her home.

Many of these people who inquire are not interested when they hear the price, but a surprising number of them are. Mrs. Briggs' customers are not always well-to-do, but they all have an artistic appreciation, she says. Some of them pay the sum without hesitation; others pay a little each month. Most of them, she has noted, regard her figures, which she once called "portrait miniatures," as works of art, and they order them for their homes with much the same attitude as they would a portrait.

BEFORE BEGINNING a new project, Mrs. Briggs plans the whole thing completely, considering character of individuals portrayed, action, grouping, textures, and color scheme. If it's a period thing, such as a pioneer scene, she begins research to determine styles of hair, material, and clothing. Then she goes through a closet filled with fabrics to find prints that are authentic and have designs diminutive enough to look in scale with her little people.

The over-all planning done, Mrs. Briggs draws profiles of the people to be copied and studies them carefully as to physical features and personality. Then she goes to work on the most difficult part, the face.

Only about 1¼ inches in length, the head is cut out of flesh-colored material, in two pieces, according to her drawing of the person's profile. These are sewed together down the center of the face, on down through the chin and neck. Extra material is left at the bottom for sewing the head to the torso. With the frequent use of small tweezers, Mrs. Briggs then stuffs the face, taking care to put the right amount of cotton here and just the right amount there.

Mrs. Briggs finishes the head before she begins anything else, sewing it up completely in back and adding hair. Usually of embroidery floss, the hair may be done in all sorts of styles: short, bobbed in back, braided in buns over the ears, made into pigtails for the small fry or even done in an upsweep. Embroidery thread also provides the sideburns, mustaches and beards for her miniature men. She completes the other features of the face, too, usually using paint to give her little people their eyes, eyelashes, eyebrows and colorful lips.

WITH THE face done, Mrs. Briggs begins work on the torso. She first provides what she calls the "plumbing"—three sheets of scratch pad rolled into individual rolls with the loose edges glued down. These she sews together to resemble a raft—they make up the foundation of the torso. She puts a layer of untreated cotton around the "plumbing" and then begins the actual cotton sculpting. While wrapping the torso tightly with thread she gives it shape by adding a dab of cotton here and a dab there. This sculpting continues until the torso has taken on proper proportions and shape. She uses ordinary absorbent cotton.

Arms and legs are sculptured in the same manner, except that the plumbing here is replaced by a heavy yet flexible wire which has a loop in the end where the extremities are connected to the torso. The arms are covered (only the parts which will show beneath the figure's clothing) with flesh-colored material. Fingers are almost impossible to make and Mrs. Briggs doesn't think them necessary anyway, for it is the thumb that tells character, she says. For hands, therefore, she makes flesh-colored mittens with the thumb giving the action.

Arms and legs when completed are fastened into the torso. The wire loops are pushed on through the cotton of the torso and sewed securely into the rolls. of paper. Mrs. Briggs fastens the head to the torso at this point, sewing the excess material below the neck down tight against the shoulders of the torso. Feet are made of plastic wood, molded right over the wire of the legs.

Now the figure must be outfitted with clothing. Mrs. Briggs does this authentically with real tucks and everything. She cuts diminutive patterns out of paper first and then fits them to her dolls. When they are right, she cuts the clothing out of the material already selected and cuts and fits as the occasion demands.

"The shoes are the hardest part," says Mrs. Briggs. These are made from real leather, shaved paper thin with a sharp razor blade. She molds the leather to the feet and painstakingly sews them in the correct fashion of the period.

NOW IT is mostly up to John Hutchings, who makes the wooden base and whatever furniture is required. Mr. Hutchings has been making props for Mrs. Briggs ever since her first cotton sculpturing attempt at the hospital, and she has nothing but praise for his wizardry in this field.

He has made, besides furniture of every description, diminutive knives and forks, the churn, wooden tub, cradle and handcart of the pioneer series. On one occasion when Mrs. Briggs did a tonsillectomy scene for the patient involved, Hutchings provided her with an adjustable operating chair such as you see in your dentist's office—one that actually went up and down. The scene, incidentally, included two women doctors from a large city on the West Coast, and the likenesses were so good that a visitor from the Coast recognized them immediately.

Mrs. Briggs has fun with the necessary extras, too, such as the food laid out on the pioneer family's table. A plateful of corn bread, complete with characteristic texture, was made from spackle tinted yellow. Tender-looking green peas are ironically enough, painted buckshot glued together one by one on the plates. Hutchings made the fowl, which he carved from wood, but Mrs. Briggs provided the rest, including the glasses of milk. These were somewhat of a problem, for it was difficult to find anything small enough to be in scale. Finally she hit upon the idea of using capsules. She would cut them off to the right size, she decided, and fill them with white liquid spackle, which would later harden. "The only thing wrong with this idea," she says, "is that the capsules dissolved when the liquid was poured in." Finally, after several other attempts and a vain search for a substitute, she filled the capsules and rushed them into the refrigerator. It worked. The capsules held their shape long enough for the spackle to harden.

PARTS OF her scenes have interesting histories and hold sentimental values for Mrs. Briggs. The fine calico worn by one of her pioneer women, for instance, is estimated by Mrs. Briggs to be about 100 years old. It was given to her by a neighbor woman, a 90-year-old real pioneer. Many other bits of fabric have been given to Mrs. Briggs by friends who have heard of her constant need for it, and occasionally she gets a package of materials from people in other states who have heard about her. For these contributions she is always grateful—sometimes she spends weeks searching for the right piece, which later may be sent to her by a friend. She is always after the thing that looks authentic, and isn't above raiding her husband's tie rack if what she thinks "right" is there.

A stickler for details, Mrs. Briggs once did a replica of Loretta Young as she appeared in "The Farmer's Daughter." Working from a photograph released by the motion picture studio, she copied Loretta from every minute detail of her checked dress and apron to the plates she was carrying on her arm. The replica looked just like Loretta, too.

MRS. BRIGGS' miniature figures have led to other avenues of income, but each time she has been offered new sources of revenue she has decided to stick with her "little people" done on an order basis. One Yuletide season she made angels that sold like wildfire. Before the season was over she was swamped with orders for the following year. Since that meant too much of a production-line thing, she turned them down in favor of her individual miniatures. At another time she received an attractive offer from a San Francisco department store which wanted to receive dolls by the lot.

Several years ago, Mrs. Briggs was given the job of doing two figures to be used in an advertisement for a large flour milling company. In national magazines the little figures, a young man and miss, were seen on a table, the shy miss peeking at him from behind a bouquet of flowers. Mrs. Briggs might have had a promising career in the advertising field, but she is sold on her method of filling orders for people who really want and enjoy her creations.

Joanne Briggs is currently working on a group she will call "Tourists," It was inspired by a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada, where she watched travelers come and go, and where she noticed that tourists seem to "shed all inhibitions as far as clothing is concerned," One of the characters, which she has partially completed, is a peroxide blonde woman wearing a bandana, of whom Mrs. Briggs says, "She is decidedly on the heavy side, but her personality shows she is too lazy to do anything about it."

"I do love people," adds Mrs. Briggs with a twinkle. "They are so interesting."