The History Of The First Realistic Love Doll

The early history of sex dolls is one that is not only fragmented but also one that reflects the many different reasons why people seek out a doll for companionship, support and to help with their physical and psychological needs.

One of the first dolls to realistically represent a person was owned by Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka for a reason that would for more modern manufacturers be deemed somewhat unethical.

Mr Kokoschka was a prodigious artist who was a young influential member of the Expressionist movement when he met Alma Mahler, a widow 20 years his senior that he was passionately and obsessively in love with.

After the pair broke up in 1914, she was the subject of one of his most famous paintings, The Bride of The Wind, but even as the years passed he could not get over her and commissioned Munich dollmaker Hermine Moos to create a doll of her likeness in July 1918.

She complied with his request and by February 1919 the Alma doll was sent to Mr Kokoschka, and initially, he was delighted, saying that she was just as beautiful as the object of his affection, sketching and painting it no less than 30 times, most notably in the paintings Woman in Blue from1919 or Girl with Doll in 1922.

However, the Silent Woman, whilst a beautiful and lovingly recreated creation, became less of an object of love and became a figure of art for Mr Kokoschka.

Depending on the interpretation of events one chooses to believe, either Mr Kokoschka tired of the doll or managed to work through the intense feelings that had inspired its creation in the first place, and the doll was destroyed during a particularly raucous party in 1919.

The story of the Alma doll is one that highlights that for many people, love dolls are as much about companionship as they are about sex.