People
know Rose O’Neill for her famous Kewpie Dolls, created at the beginning of the
Twentieth Century and more popular at the time than Mickey Mouse.
The
multi-talented O’Neill was so much more — a novelist, regular illustrator with magazines such as Ladies Home Journal and Good Housekeeping, suffragette
and America’s first female cartoonist. Her Kewpie Dolls began as illustrations in
periodicals, then were established as dolls when the public demanded them.
After
all that success O’Neill created another figure, that of the Ho-Ho, something
akin to a laughing Buddha. Like her Kewpie dolls, they came in different shades of skin, much like humans. She was a woman ahead of her time, in that regard, creating dolls for both white and African American children.
The Ho-Hos didn’t make it with the public, however,
and O’Neill abandoned the idea.You can see examples of these cute, laughing figures at Bonniebrook, O’Neill’s reconstructed home built on the original foundation outside of Brandon; the house burned in 1947. The Bonniebrook Historical Society offers tours of the home with some of O’Neill’s furnishings, plus a museum showcasing the life of this amazing but little-known artist, writer and activist. And her Ho-Hos.
Rose died pennyless in 1944 at the age of 69, but according to the Historical Society, "she had made nearly 5,500 drawings, innumerable paintings both in oil and watercolor; she was a sculptor, suffragist, inventor, business woman, philosopher, poet, novelist, children’s book author, and even a musician.
As the web site so proudly proclaims, "There is no mistaking that she lived an extraordinarily rich and productive life."
