Houseful of Hippo

The M. J. Marks Collection

This website is the virtual museum of the Michael J. Marks HIPPO Collection. It is enormous in variety and quantity. New entries will be added as items are photographed and entered into the allthingshippo database.

[adapted from an archived, in-house, newsletter article about M. J. Marks and his collection for the employees and friends of Alexander & Baldwin, Inc.]

Pinky may be small, haughty and pert, but his bright fuchsia color stands out in a crowd. Horatio is big, blue and so good-natured he’ll let a bird sit on his head all day long. Henrietta wears eye shadow and false eyelashes. Schlemmacher is a showoff.

Admittedly, this is a strange assortment. But, their various sizes, shapes, textures and temperaments notwithstanding, these characters share two things in common. They’re all hippopotamuses (or hippopotami), better known as hippos. And they all resided with Michael (Mike) J. Marks, former assistant general counsel for Alexander & Baldwin, Inc. These are but a few of nearly 1,000 hippos in M. J. Marks menagerie, surely one of the most extensive and unusual personal collections around.

The hippos of the M. J. Marks Collection, of course, are not real animals. But, perhaps because there are so many of them and in such a wide variety of styles, they come alive. Ideas of hippos as unattractive, slow-moving and repulsive creatures quickly disappear when encountering the collection.

“Like bulldogs, they’re so ugly, they’re cute,” is the way Mr. Marks (Mike) described hippos. He started collecting them by chance while a student at Cornell University in New York. “I don’t even remember the exact circumstances surrounding my first hippo, except that it was a college put-on,” said Mike. “The next thing I knew people were giving me hippos as presents. Soon I began buying them myself. My collection has been growing ever since.”

Collecting hippos is a hobby to which Mike was faithful and devoted. Hippos also became his personal theme and “trademark.” Mike once remarked, “I get a big kick out of seeing the collection grow, and people’s reactions are worth it all. People who don’t know I collect them, walk into my home and are obviously shocked. I can see that they must be wondering what it’s all about as they ‘casually’ look around. They’re dying to say something but hesitate. Until I break the ice, they’re uncomfortable. Those who know I collect hippos don’t realize how many I have and are astonished when they see the full collection for the first time.”

From his offbeat hobby, Mike derived great appreciation for hippos. “They lend themselves to tremendous creativity on the part of artists and artisans—more so than most other animals. You can have hippos with endless varieties of expressions, from vicious to whimsical. This can’t be done as easily with other animals that commonly are collected such as lions, frogs, elephants, owls and turtles.”

Nasty and Nice

The vast M. J. Marks Collection bears this out. His hippos look mean, kind, stern, nasty, stuffy, tender, dopey, sneaky, sad, happy, shy, sophisticated, even rushed. They can be found standing, sitting, lying down or kneeling. Their mouths may be opened or closed, their snouts lofty or lowered in humility, their ears up or down. Their textures, colors and designs are equally diverse. One hippo is made of glass with a patchwork pattern. Another is a brown woodcarving. Some have the look and feel of sand.

Many hippos are figurines, objet d’art or statuary. Dozens are utilitarian hippos, “earning their keep,” as Mike put it. The Collection includes hippo planters, cookie jars, bookends, lamps, candles and candle holders, pillows, towels, ash trays, dishes, cooking utensils, napkins, fruit bowls, paperweights, pencil holders and soap trays. There’s a hippo leather hassock, bathroom scale, toothbrush and toothpaste holder, stapler and bulletin board. Hippos inhabited every room of Mike’s home and dominated his lanai. A few also have found their way to his office at Alexander & Baldwin, Inc.

Although Mike frequently received hippos as gifts, he bought most of them himself. He bought them in Hawai‘i, across the US, including his native city Cleveland, Ohio, and abroad. “As others may search for souvenirs, I look for hippos,” was his explanation. He regularly received information on the latest hippo merchandise from various stores throughout the country, where he was a popular customer. At Gump’s of San Francisco, where he bought many of the finer items in his collection, he was fondly welcomed with, “Here’s the hippo man from Hawai‘i.”

Avez vous Hippopatame?

Mike learned to say, “Do you have any hippos?” in many languages for his jaunts into stores abroad. The word for hippo in Spanish is hipopotamo, in Chinese, her ma (河馬), French hippopotame, and Danish, flodhest. He bought stunning pieces from stores overseas. Occasionally, Mike acquired a hippo through sheer luck. This happened in Salisbury, Rhodesia, where he was master of ceremonies for a wedding of friends. The bride and others were both amused and aghast over what they all considered a tasteless wedding present—a large copper serving tray engraved with a huge, ugly hippo. Mike ended up, and very happily so, with the tray—as a gift from the bride!

“When customs agents ask what I have to declare and I tell them 23 hippos, they usually don’t believe me,” Mike once recounted. “But, generally, they don’t give me too much of a hassle probably because they figure anyone that crazy can’t possibly be dishonest.

Mike admitted he had “gone overboard” in hippo collecting. “Usually only extreme size or very high cost will prevent me from buying a hippo I see,” he explained.

Gift-giving friends and relatives were generous and thoughtful, according to Mike, although inevitably there are duplications among their presents.

Not all gifts were store-bought. Some people enjoyed making hippos for Mike—stitchery works, macramé, pottery. Dozens of pillows attest to his mother’s expertise at needlework.

Mike once recalled, “Years ago, I took some hippos to my first law office in Honolulu—including my big Horatio, a blue ceramic piece. I put them on my secretary’s desk and elsewhere in her working area. Some time later, a new attorney in the office, after seeing them, came to me quietly and noted that while my secretary was terribly efficient and nice, she certainly seemed weird, with all those hippos around.”

Metropolitan’s William

Although Mike occasionally ran into someone who collects hippos, he has no idea how many do, in Hawai‘i or elsewhere. No attempt has been made to gather such a group together to his knowledge. He had heard of some famous people in the world who were fellow collectors and was sure of one prestigious hippo-mate—the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The museum’s symbol is “William” or “Willie,” a 3,900-year-old blue hippo made of faience, earthenware decorated with opaque, colored glaze. William, reincarnation of an old Egyptian hippo god, is used as the theme for many items, in and out of the museum.

Mike did very well indeed with his own hippo line. He also had hippo ties, plus T-shirts and hippo jewelry, including a “William” chain and cuff links. All of his greeting cards—Christmas, Valentine, birthday—featured hippos. He had drawers full of hippo notes for all occasions. Mike also enjoyed giving hippo books, toys and stuffed animals to children.

In no methodical manner, some of Mike’s hippos were named after their givers, the stores from which they were bought, their color or material, or some special event or period when they joined the collection. Schlemmacher, for example, bears a name taken from the prestigious New York store, Hammacher-Schlemmer, where Mike bought him. This is a large, fierce-looking white ceramic hippo, showing off his big mouth and teeth.

Mike had his favorite hippos, too, some of which he valued for sentimental reasons, others because he liked their appearance. The papier-mâché Pinky Potomus and his “twin,” Rose, for example, were old and dear friends. “These may appear to be inconsequential and tacky hippos,” Mike said of Pinky and Rose, “but they have acquired special status in the collection. In a former apartment where I wasn’t allowed to have any real pets, some friends decided to ‘breathe life and even humanize’ Pinky and Rose and make them my pets in violation of house rules. One friend even made Pinky a sweatshirt with a big ‘P’ standing not for Pinky, but for Punahou.”

The Real Thing

Mike respected real hippos as much as he admires the collectable ones. He had a good number of books about hippos. He also has made it a point to visit areas where hippos congregate. He participated in scenic drives on and along the Zambesi and Chobe Rivers between Botswana and Zambia and to Victoria Falls to observe their activities.

Riverhorses

Hippos have fascinated people since ancient times. Largest living land creatures next to the elephant, the three- or four-ton hippos are natives of Africa, and can be found in large numbers today in swamps and rivulets of the Nile basin. The ungainly creatures live in the water by day and graze by night. Herbivorous animals, they eat only grass, roots and herbs, venturing out of the water after sunset to feed on this vegetation. The rest of the time is spent in the water where they mate, give birth and sleep.

One reason for this is because their skins dry quickly and cannot stand the heat. So hippos rarely go out into the hot sun during the day. When they do, their skins exude an oily, dark red substance that looks like blood. This is how hippos got the reputation for “sweating blood.” Circuses quickly capitalized on this and advertised hippos as “giant blood sweating beasts.”

Another reason for spending so much time in water is their huge bodies and short legs. Why should they strain themselves standing up on land when they can float effortlessly in water?

Hippos are important to the chain of life in the rivers and deltas of Africa where their rich, organic waste provides necessary food for many insect larvae, millions of tiny fresh water shrimp and other organisms.

Peaceful, non-aggressive animals, hippos attack only when threatened or provoked, and usually are not dangerous to humans. What frightens these animals most, and in turn makes them dangerous, is anything that comes between them and the water—particularly deep parts of rivers or pools that they call home. That is why boats pose a threat to the beasts.

Crocodiles are the hippos’ only other real enemy and infrequently at that. Crocodiles wouldn’t dream of trying to eat a big hippo, but they have attempted to make meals out of the babies. That is why mother hippos frequently backpack their young (which at birth weigh from 60 to 100 pounds) away from the jaws of the crocodiles. Hippos are well equipped to defend themselves against any enemies. They have mouths so wide that a child could fit upright in them, and extra long, very sharp teeth.

Male or bull hippos weigh up to four and a half tons, the approximate weight of three Volkswagen buses. Bulls grow to be 14 feet long and five feet tall. The female generally weighs ten percent less than the male. In spite of their size, hippos are excellent swimmers, moving gracefully and like fast fish in the water for great distances. The hippo’s foot has four toes which spread like a duck, enabling the animal to walk in mud. But, like the elephant, the hippo cannot jump.

Huge vertebrae and powerful neck muscles support a hippo’s head. Tusks grow throughout its lifetime and fit into a sheath within the upper jaw. The nostrils are narrow slits that close completely when the animal submerges. As the hippo cannot breath under water, it must come to the surface for air.

Hippos’ eyes are small, but provide the animals with good sight. Their senses of smell and hearing, however, are better than their vision. Their ears are almost constantly moving—a comical sight when only the ears show above water. Hippos make three distinguishable sounds—a mild sneeze when they come up for air, a snort like a hog’s and a loud bellow when they’re frightened or angry.

In addition to sustaining tiny water creatures, hippos also provide a home for the African bird known as the oxpecker or tick bird. As the hippos float lazily along in the water, these birds can be seen walking back and forth across their heavy heads and broad backs, completely at ease. The birds pick insects from the hippos’ backs for their food and drink water from little pools that form in the large animals’ bodies.

They may not have the grace or beauty of other large animals, nor the cuddly sweetness of smaller ones. But, hippos play an important role in the balance of nature.