Rose O'Neill's Elfin Little Kewpie

 

The first drawing of the Kewpie, the familiar little elf with the fat tummy, was made to please a child and later became a colored pictorial feature in a woman's magazine. It's name is the diminutive form of cupid. Rose O'Neill's first bisque Kewpie doll was an experiment in 1912. A year later twenty-two factories were busy turning them out to supply the demand.

      It was in 1912 that Rose O'Neill's elfin little Kewpie first came on the market as a doll. Before then it had been a colored picture with verses in a woman's magazine. New York toy-makers saw, or thought they saw, the making of a popular doll in that chubby little elf. One of them suggested it to Miss O'Neill and a contract was drawn up and signed for the manufacture of a bisque Kewpie doll. When the first consignment of bisque Kewpies arrived the toy-maker tried them out on the dealers. A few of the dealers shook their heads but those of them who had wives and children given to reading the women's magazines recognized the familiar little elf with the fat little tummy and leaped with avidity into the Kewpie doll business. Mothers who had been following the versified career of the Kewpie, embraced his bisque image and took him home to their children. Children who had been laboriously haggling Kewpies out of magazines with blunt shears, took their little friend to their breasts immediately.
       The toy-maker speeded up his factory and hurried more Kewpies on the market. Before the end of 1913, twenty-two factories were making bisque Kewpies from Rose O'Neill's model. Before the second year had passed, two more factories began turning out celluloid elves of a similar pattern. Six months later another factory was opened up for the manufacture of indestructible dolls of the same model. That made twenty-five factories working overtime supplying a hungry market. There were seventeen numbers of these Kewpies on sale; twelve sizes in bisque, five sizes in celluloid and unbreakable material. During the war when bisque, which is a variety of unglazed china manufactured in Europe, was not obtainable, the production of Kewpies was decreased somewhat although the indestructible model was always on sale. Today with renewed importation of bisque, he is getting very lively. But never has there been a time since 1912 when the Kewpie was not selling.

Kewpies made in 1962. Some are even made today!

       Rose O'Neill, who was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, but who now divides her time between a New York studio and her Italian villa in Connecticut, tells me that she first made the Kewpie to please a certain child. Then she began to dream of Kewpies until they would not let her alone. The name, of course, is diminutive for Cupid but Miss O'Neill assures me that their nature is entirely different since, as she expresses it, regular Cupids are always getting people into trouble while Kewpies are always getting them out. To older people their adventures in verse were somewhat reminiscent of Palmer Cox's Brownies, but as dolls they appealed more to children.
       Miss O'Neill is now preparing a soft-bodied Kewpie which she calls a 'hug-Kewpie.' She is a busy woman, for not only does she make the Kewpie, she writes the verses recording his exploits and has modeled all the various sizes of Kewpies for the manufacturer.
       There are other American women designing, making and selling various forms of dolls. Gene George Pfeffer, who invented the Splash-me doll in bathing togs which had considerable popularity a few years ago, made a financial success out of her doll until she devoted her interests to other work. Eight years ago when she was a student in the University of California, she modeled her bathing beauty doll and forwarded a picture of it to a New York toy house. Their reply was a prompt request to come to New York and bring the doll along. She came and the doll made money for several years. But the bathing doll, like the Billiken and the Good Fairy, was more for grown-ups than for children. And since children are more enduring in their affections, the dolls that children love are the dolls that have lasting popularity. Children are born conservatives and a popular doll may be good for generations. It is that much more a triumph to successfully implant a new doll in their affections.
       Women are dressing dolls, inventing doll furniture and doll outfits. Miss Dolly has a well equipped home, a garden and garden furniture, a dressing table of which a cinema star might well be proud. She has a wardrobe trunk and a wardrobe to fill it and all the accessories for travel. And for most of these she may thank the American woman. The American woman doll-maker and her American doll are established facts. And the men who handle the manufacturing and distributing ends of the doll business are wearing a broad and ample smile, quite forgetting the fact that sometimes they had to be coaxed, oftener they had to be prodded and occasionally they needed to be brow-beaten by the women doll inventors before they would consent to give the dolls a trial on the market. Stella Burke May, 1925

• Women and Dolls by Stella Burke May
• The Inventor of The Walking Doll
• Kewpie Baby Dolls by Rose O'Neill 

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