Painted Porcelain Collectibles

I find it interesting, here in our world of modern technology and insatiable craving for the latest sleek, shiny gadgets, that the sale of porcelain figurines - with their antique look and quaint old-style depictions of people and animals - was a multi-billion dollar industry throughout the entire 1990s. It's as if part of us hankers back to reminders of a time when when all the things in our life didn't have sleek satin-metallic finishes and hard corners. After looking around at all our modern furniture, stainless refrigerators, and black and silver boxes with cables running out of them, we just want our eyes to fall on something sweet, handcrafted and hand painted.

And so it is that we love to collect these reduced and diminutive replicas of ourselves, of other people beautifully posing in stride, or dance, or a dramatic reenactment, and even of doe-eyed children and animals. We paint luminous pictures of people in grand settings, our own families or some other famous person We sculpt stately busts and statues of ourselves. Even our young ones spend hours in fascination, dressing and posing their modern dolls - the girls talk to their Barbie Dolls as if they were a best girlfriend, and the boys prop whole armies of action figures in commanding stances. It certainly shows our fascination with our own human form. As we grow older, there are those who will put their dolls away forever, but as we see by the steady sales rise, many will simply elevate their affections towards more delicate, intricate and artistic figurines.

Currently, the demand for these miniature statuettes of elegant water-bearers, dancing lovers, children swinging, and countless other figures posed in the activities of daily life, is on the upswing, for both the larger manufacturers of current pieces - Lladro, Hummel, Precious Moments, Dresden - as well as a determined hunt for the sometimes-pricey or priceless antique figurines of the past few millennia. Retail and online auction houses are overflowing with pieces from all three centuries from the 1700s onward, when the German ceramics factories at Meissen finally got their hands on the naturally occurring kaolin that had given the Chinese a virtual lock on the porcelain figure market throughout many of their dynasties,  and created a modern hard-paste clay. The Meissen craftsmen, as well as those in other German houses and, later, French, Italian and English factories, perfected their materials and methods, mixing the kaolin with fine flint and feldspar to create an amazingly smooth, hard paste clay that dried to a delicate touch on the first kiln firing, then very hard after additional firings and the application of glazes that absorbed into the vitreous clay.

These figurines are often incredibly detailed, perfect in scale and representation of the human body, right down to the tiny fingers and toes.
If you've come to visit painted porcelain today, it means your own fascination with these wonderful statuette scenes of human life is as strong as our own. Thank you for visiting. Here you'll find a copious collection of all the famous brands and many antique selections, with connections to many dealers and private auctions that will help you find just the right figurines you'll treasure, at prices that can't be beat. For more information on how figurines are formed, painted and sold, please read on into our many posts on the left, or check out our in depth coverage of other collectibles like this requested article on vintage perfume bottles from Avon.