The Story of the Kewpie Doll

The Kewpie Doll’s place in Australian social history was cemented when Ray Lawler’s Play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll was first performed in 1955. The seventeen  dolls  referred to in the title were annual gifts for the Melbourne  girlfriends of two Queensland cane cutters.

Of course by then the  celluloid doll on a cane stick was an established  favourite among much younger  girls attending agricultural shows. It was those frothy tutus with glitter  that captured (and continues to capture ) their imagination.

Source – Ebay

She’s got one!

Sadly, I never owned one myself. They were quite expensive for something you could only look at (around 7s 6d from memory). Although I gazed at them longingly, my money was spent on showbags, air-propelled rubber spiders and those lapel roses that squirted water when indulgent parents responded to, ‘Smell my rose.‘

UPDATE  – I must add a moving comment made after  I posted this piece to a Facebook group.

Thanks for allowing me to share this Sherry.

Kewpie dolls featured in the fun filled closing ceremony of the  Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.  One of them, ‘Betty’ is now held in the Australian National Museum.

A DIFFICULT  BEGINNING

During  the early 20C Australia was a deeply conservative society and the full size Kewpie did not find favour with everyone.  The following is taken from a piece published on April 25 1917 in The Daily Telegraph under the headline KEWPIE TYRANNY;

Two children were ‘playing dollies’ om the lawn when Molly, the little girl next door, passed by with a great celluloid kewpie.  ‘Oh, cried one child, “Just look at that Molly’s baby; it’s got nothing on!”  With a wave of affection the two little ‘mothers’ returned to their beloved dolls….In giving their children these grotesque structures to nurse, to play with and even to love, ‘Glad-eye’ dolls and other innovations, which are expensive and anything but pretty or loveable, have deposed the dearly loved doll. Mothers have forgotten their own childhood days when half the joy in life consisted in dressing and undressing their mute ‘babies’.   Signed N.M.W

No doubt in reality the little girls would have rushed inside and pleaded for a Kewpie just like Molly had. 😎

Not a stitch on. Source – Pinterest

Then there was this,  headed;  DISTORTING CHILDISH TASTE

What has become of the waxen beauties which delighted the hearts of the children of a couple of decades ago – which had ‘real hair’ that could be combed and plaited, eye lashes that were really eyelashes….where are the pink-cheeked, rosy lipped dolls which imbued in the hearts of their happy possessors a love and appreciation of the beautiful?   (Freeman’s Journal, Oct. 27 1921)

I was amused to read a suggestion of what to do with an unwanted  Kewpie doll. It was probably dreamt up by the Kewpie hating N.M.W., and sounds slightly sinister.

A novel holder for talcum powder is made from a kewpie doll by punching small holes in the doll’s head with a pin, through which the powder is sprinkled. A larger hole is cut in the doll’s back through which it is filled with powder. Cover the hole for filling with a ribbon tied tightly around the body.  (Recorder, Feb 16 1821)

Although the dolls became so much part of our culture they were actually German in origin.

A German Kewpie made of bisque, circa 1915

They became hugely popular after  American artist Rose O’Neill  featured them in a cartoon strip. which first appeared in 1909.

FOR MORE ON THE HISTORY OF THE KEWPIE, CLICK HERE.