When Elena König (Turin, 1886-1974) was young she travelled a lot and met many international artists but, at the beginning of First World War, she came back to Turin and married Enrico Scavini and they had a daughter who suddently died. After her dead, Elena started to manufacture dolls with great success.

The business took its first tentative steps in the family’s home and was given Elena’s nickname: Lenci. In 1930, it employed 600 people, mainly women. The Lenci dolls were sold all over the world, highly appreciated for extreme attention to details and enormous model variety. However, this definitely contributed to Lenci’s deep crisis because other factories started selling similar dolls at cheaper prices.

In 1933 the Scavini family was forced to share the company stock with two new partners, Pilade and Flavio Garella, who obtained full ownership in 1937 and did a drastic staff and production reduction. The Garella family ran the Lenci company until 1997 when it was taken over by “Bambole Italiane Srl''. The activity definitely shut down in 2002.