Cybis Collectors’ Society Golden Prince and Golden Princess Porcelain UNIQUE SET

Description: Cybis Collectors’ Society Golden Prince and Golden Princess Porcelain UNIQUE SET. Prince is 8 1/2" high and the princess is 8" high. Excellent USED Display Condition with no marks, cracks or flaws. Shipped by USPS Priority Mail with care. One of many literary works that inspired Cybis porcelain designs was Mark Twain’s tale of The Prince and the Pauper. In fact, there ended up being more than one version of those two lads, spanning a full decade. Each sculpture was sold separately. This “tweaked” version of The Prince appeared in autumn 1996 under the name of Golden Prince, and his purchase was restricted to members of the Cybis Collectors’ Society. He was designated as the members-only piece for 1996-1997; the first/previous piece (1995-96) had been the Golden Princess. while the Golden Princess piece had never been offered by Cybis before, the Golden Prince was a simply a minor adaptation of the now-retired 1987 Prince. His plumed hat was replaced by a crown, which makes him about a half inch shorter at 8.5″, and the colorway was changed to all-white with gold accents, but otherwise the pieces are identical. There is one other difference and that is that the impressed mold copyright date on the Golden Prince is 1996 even though it is the identical design that was copyrighted in 1986. This is very odd, because all of the other “revisions” of existing Cybis molds retained their original copyright date in the mold. WHAT IS CYBIS PORCELAIN?You may have seen examples of Cybis porcelain art sculptures for sale in antiques stores or online shops and auction venues and wondered ‘What is this stuff, anyway, and what makes it worth more than, say, Hummel figurines?’ This will serve as a general introduction.But first, some backstory. Boleslaw Cybis (pronounced SEE–bis) was born in Lithuania in 1895. During the 1920s and 1930s the quality of his work was recognized throughout Europe and culminated in a request from the US government to create a series of murals for the “Hall of Honor” in the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. After obtaining US citizenship he and his wife Marja established a studio in the NY City suburb of Astoria, with a focus on ceramic sculptures in the tradition of the artisans of Eastern Europe; in 1942 he decided to relocate to Trenton, NJ. Cybis named the new venture the Cordey China Company and produced china giftware – painted and highly glazed china figurines, giftware, and lamp bases, all lavishly embellished with applied decorations such as ‘dipped lace’ ruffles, flowers, leaves and vines. By the late 1940s Cybis decided to shift entirely to art porcelain; in 1950 he opened a second location in Trenton and named it the Cybis Porcelain Art Studio. Shortly thereafter he sold the Cordey China Company which continued under new ownership as a lamp manufacturer.The sculptures produced in the early 1940s are best described as “artsy” and bear little resemblance to the studio’s subsequent output. They were the sort of thing that Great-Aunt Matilda would probably regard with tilted head and a distinctly puzzled expression before turning to you and commenting, in a desperate attempt to be polite, that it was “interesting, although a bit odd.” One well-known early Cybis bust of a woman has hair that resembles a collection of worms – that sort of thing. The overall genre is that of Neo-Meissen rococo and papka, applied decorations being overwhelmingly in evidence.Boleslaw Cybis died in 1957, and his wife Marja in 1958; his protege Marylin Kozuch took over the ownership of the studio as per the terms of Cybis’ wish that the artistic integrity of its work be maintained in perpetuity. Among the best and brightest of the talented porcelain artists who were drawn to the increasingly-respected Cybis studio was a young Hungarian immigrant named Laszlo Ispanky who joined the studio in 1960 and quickly rose to the position of Master Sculptor. His influence is seen in all of the portrait sculptures from that era. In 1966 he left to establish his own studio and distinctive line of porcelain sculptures.Because Cybis sculptures were created in an artisan environment and never mass produced, the level of detail work is quite high. The creation of a sculpture itself (and its subsequent master mold) was only the beginning of the process. Next would come experiments in colors and decorations via “Artist’s Proof” sculptures from which the final specifications would be chosen. Specific paint colors were developed which could withstand the multiple firings with their colors consistent (although the legendary Blue Fox which went into the kiln as a sculpture in its normal reddish brown paint but emerged in the most remarkable shades of blue, is a notable exception which has never been explained). The small size and intimate surroundings of the studio, as well as its philosophy, meant that the actual production output was quite limited even by the standards of the day.

Price: 195 USD

Location: North Tonawanda, New York

End Time: 2024-11-19T17:03:29.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD