Happy Couple

Wooing among the waves, this comic couple wear wide smiles (perhaps someone is about to snap their picture and told them to say cheese!).  They stand beside a small trinket dish, painted blue to resemble water, and behind them is an opening that could serve as a short vase.   Of excellent sharp bisque and 3.5 inches high, this playful pair is incised only "2916" around the base of the vase, but it is clearly by the German company of Shafer and Vater. 

Cover Girl

I  have written books on bathing beauties, but here is a bathing beauty on a book. She is part of the series of sea sirens by Sitzendorf Porcelain Factory, pictured earlier on this blog.  In fact, I may be personally acquainted with this particular lady and her lobster, as in 2014 I sold a duplicate figurine to a photographer who said the piece might be pictured in a book on Maine!  I am a fan of Ann Beattie, and already had planned to buy her book, but now I may have to buy it in hardcover, rather than on my Kindle, so I can have a picture of my cover girl!

Connecting the Dots

This full figure pincushion doll poses prettily in her polka-dot bathing suit.  Of good china, she is 3.25 inches tall and 2.75 inches long.  Her base, with four sew holes, is faintly incised on right side “Germany” and on left what appears to read “15213.”  

She is by the German firm of Carl Schneider Erban and is pictured in its old catalogues.   This little lass was also offered without the base, either in spotted swimwear or au naturel.  But who is the rather distressed damsel on the right, also adorned in dots? 

She appears to be the bathing-suited version of this nervous nude warding off the little crab climbing her calf, who has appeared previously in this blog.

The catalogue shows a nude version of this crabby cutie without the base.  Considering that the swimsuits are simply painted on, Schneider could easily offer these lissome lasses either dotted and dotless.