SevenSistersArts: The Brownies and Palmer Cox

I was looking at some blogs this morning and noticed that someone posted a photo of something that someone had cut from sheet metal to greet people at their front door that looked exactly like one of these little fellows - I have been a fan of Palmer Cox for a long time (although for several years, I thought these Brownies were created by Howard Pyle, another illustrator from the last century). Anyway, here they are - enjoy this historical footnote about product branding in marketing, featuring Palmer Cox and his famous Brownies.

Palmer Cox (April 28, 1840 – July 24, 1924) was a Canadian, best known for The Brownies, his series of humorous verse books and comic strips about the mischievous but kindhearted fairy-like sprites. The cartoons were published in several books, such as The Brownies, Their Book (1887).

The Brownies

The Brownies is a series of publications by Canadian illustrator and author Palmer Cox, based on names and elements from Celtic mythology and traditional highland Scottish stories told to Cox by his grandmother. Illustrations with verse aimed at children, The Brownies was published in magazines and books during the late 19th century and early 20th century. The Brownie characters became famous in their day, and at the peak of their popularity were a pioneering name brand within merchandising.

Due to the popularity of Cox's The Brownies, one of the first popular handheld cameras was named after them, the Eastman Kodak Brownie camera.

Brownie is the name of a long-running and extremely popular series of simple and inexpensive cameras made by Eastman Kodak. The Brownie popularized low-cost photography and introduced the concept of the snapshot. The first Brownie, introduced in February of 1900, was a very basic cardboard box camera.

Biography
He was born in Granby, Quebec, son of Michael and Sarah (Miller) Cox, and became a carpenter and car builder. He moved to San Francisco via Panama as a railroad contractor, and he lived in there from 1863 to 1875. In 1874, he began to formally study drawing and contribute illustrated stories to such publications as Golden Era and Alta California. After 1875, Cox lived in New York
(Pine View House, East Quogue, Long Island). During this time he regularly contributed editorial cartoons to Oscar Hammerstein's United States Tobacco Journal.

The earliest publication of Brownie characters took place in 1879, but not until the February, 1881 issue of Wide Awake magazine were the creatures printed in their final form. In 1883, Brownie stories appeared in St. Nicholas Magazine and as their popularity rose, they were featured in publications such as the Ladies' Home Journal.

Cox's Brownies were little men who had mischievous adventures together. Each Brownie had a distinctive physical appearance: for example, one, Cholly Boutonnière, wore a top hat and monocle, another was dressed as a stereotypical Chinese peasant, yet another was dressed as a Red Indian chief in war bonnet. Cox's text was quite crude, and did not develop individual personalities for the Brownies, aside from the "ethnic" ones speaking in stereotypical dialect. Cox's illustrations tended to show a crowd of Brownies jumbled together, with specific Brownies recurring from one illustration to the next, but with no Brownie occupying a predictable location in the picture.

Cox died in his home, Brownie Castle, on July 24, 1924. His tombstone, decorated with a Brownie figure, reads: In creating the Brownies he bestowed a priceless heritage on childhood.

Homages in other works

Richard F. Outcault referenced Cox and The Brownies in a February 9, 1895 cartoon of Hogan's Alley
.
In the children's novel Rufus M, by Eleanor Estes set during World War I, young Rufus Moffat and his older sister Jane have a contest involving Palmer Cox's Brownie books: each new illustration, they compete to see who first spots the Brownie in the top hat.