They have been taken from word.doc documents - as the links from his homepage have become problematical over the years - so are low-resolution, and I've filled the gaps so they are a bit mixed-up. As you'll see lower down, these are a mess really (not on Cristianu's original pages - I hasten to add), as over the years people have added figures to the wrong sets, swapped bases to fill gaps in their collections and not properly annotated the changes, or the finds, so try to ignore the bases until you get to the bottom of the post, where hopefully it will all start to make sense!
Cristianu's website seems to be still
viewable from the sub-sections; Elephas Maximus (Andrew) on STS recently found a working
bookmark to the animal section, and the home page may still work on older
machines, but newer ones won't allow the old Windows Frontpage coding to work; specifically the 'fphover' button hot-links on the homepage.
If you have working links/bookmarks to any
of the other sections/sub-sections, let me know and I'll do a post with them on,
which can be linked to the original link (top right) through tags. In the meantime the animals are here.
I'll kill the myths at the start
Chinese 'Dog of Fu' (pronounced foe)
or lion guard, carved in celadon jade
Myth 1 - They are 'Chinese' sculptures
The common mistake (going back to Fontanini's original issues) is of
calling them Chinese (chinois), they are not necessarily Chinese
in origin or particular influence, and definitely not in style and while some
of the characters depicted are clearly of Chinese dress or origin, others
aren't.
All original Chinese sculptural figurines
whether plain or stained (pigmented) soapstone, the harder celadon-jades, 'Blanks'
(or 'Blanc
de Meudon' - white glazed porcelain), Famille Rose & Famille
Verte (porcelain decorated in the Western style) or the carved
bamboo (often lacquered in reddish-brown to give the appearance of an almost
plastic finish), are in - or tend toward - an anatomically rounded or fuller
(well-fed) style; as are most Japanese Satsuma figures,
no . . . the output of Fontanini (and
their copyists) we are looking at with the 'oriental' sculpts are actually aping
Japanese Okimono ivories or bronzes. Chinese Tang-ware is older and more
stylised sculpture - you may be familiar with the painted pottery horses, or
think of the Terracotta Army.
But back to Okimono - they ape them well; both to the caricature aspect and
taller slimmer styling and with the fact that they were originally produced by Fontanini in various shades of white and
cream plastic, sometimes wash-stained to mimic aged ivory.
A set of six early Fontnini sculpts are to be found here.
Further complications come from the fact
that some characters have several conflicting stories with origins in fact
and/or fantasy. They can have up to four spellings of a Chinese name, another
Indian (Sanskrit?) name and/or several alternate names - with subsequent spelling
variations. Characters can move between myths, fairy-stories and history rather
too fluidly and several religions (Buddhism, Dao/Taoism, Hinduism, Sikhism and
Japanese Shinto) claim several of the characters
- for different reasons.
(thanks to Peter Fox for letting me shoot these)
These are Chinese in influence (and
origin?) and may even be Fontanini,
but I am not aware of them being such, have no evidence of such, and firmly believe
them to be Hong Kong tourist figures, which do ape the 'Blanc
de Moudon' figurines from China - the reason for their inclusion here;
you can see they are after a very different style, like Fontanini however, they are an 'ivorene' plastic, antiqued with a
dark-grey wash, worked into the incised detailing.
However, as well as priestly personages or
religious deities, Okimono are known for both their depictions of
occupational/craftspeople and/or 'everyday' subject matter as well as for -
specifically - figures with fish, and this set has five or six fish or fishing
related poses, another sign of its Japanese or part-Japanese origins.
Within the figures below are Gods, priests,
rural craftspeople, classic tourist tropes, a couple of possible known
characters, some dancers and - hiding among them - Kinder's
apparent made-up-names, several of whom have parallels in the stories of old!
And one must also bear in mind that culturally speaking; China, Japan,
pre-Mogul India and others in the region were closer once, than they maybe now.
One figurine looks more Siamese (modern day
Thailand); the female dancer in a tall hat, another looks more Indo-Asian; the
chap with his arms folder and having a large sword hung at his waist, while two
do have very Chinese-looking top-knot hairpieces (striking octopus tentacles
with a sword and playing flute), but such hair was worn by the Japanese too,
while the chap with an alligator/crocodile (salt water?) is a known Japanese
tourist thing. So the jury's still out on this one, but not Chinese overall,
maybe 50/50?
It would be easier and more accurate if
everyone could get in the habit of calling them the Fontanini 'Oriental' or Asian figurines!
My two (I have a bunch of similar figures
in storage), both sourced in the UK and therefore possibly Lyons Tea? They are
very rough, poorly finished versions of the Fontanini
originals, with no sign of having had a plinth, while the integral bases are
crude and misshapen.
Myth 2 - They represent the 'Immortals' or
other specific groups
Several commentators have tried to tie the
8 Daoist (Taoist) 'Immortals' or even the 18 Lohan characters into these 'sets'
[see Myth 3 below], but only three of them pass muster as such characters - and
then only barely!
The guy holding a 'dragon' fish as tall as
himself over his shoulder could (and only 'could') be either a 'Lung-man' (with
a sturgeon) at the Dragons Gate from Chinese mythology or Pan-t'o-chia (Panthaka in
Sanskrit?) the 10th Lohan who charmed a Dragon, while the man with a feathered
fan could (again; 'could') be interpreted as Chung-li Ch'uan (Zhongli Quan)-
one of the eight immortals, or Chu-ch'a
Pan-t'o-chia (Chota Panthaka) the
16th Lohan. Of the women - the lady holding a bunch of flowers can be taken as Ho Hsien-ku (He Xian'gu) with her lotus, one of the Eight Immortals? Yet the
flowers - as modelled - don't look like lotus blooms, let alone a single 'magic'
lotus - so it's a stretch to take her thus.
Six of the characters have been given
Chinese names on one or two websites, but these seem to be the names awarded
them by Kinder in their set of
diminutive, die-cast copies, which came late to the oeuvre and I can't find
them in Derek Walters' Chinese Mythology,
the book I've been working from.
Google revealed that two may be taken from The Water Margin, with one also having
the further choice of being mythical or an Empress, while another could choose
between a scholar or a Prince; the other three drew a blank, so I guess - as a
group - they may be fictional 'Chinese' Ferrero-names,
with some happening to be common enough names to attribute by random happenstance!
Likewise, the various premium issues in
France gave their sets Chinese titles (Chinese
Occupations, Chinese Saga's etc...),
but with some Fontanini-sourced
exceptions, these are or can be crude copies, possibly from Hong Kong (they
mostly aren't marked) and pull various poses from the larger range of original
sculpts with little or no sense of order. Mir
(washing powder) went with "Chinese
Statuettes".
Myth 3 - That these are all made by Fontanini*
While you can call it 'a' set (the
whole line/range), they seem to have been designed/used for issuing in
pairs, sixes, twelves or eighteens with more than 34 sculpts - that I know of
- and not every figure was issued in every style or size, at least four (like
the Napoleonics) being confined to the larger sizes, another two being re-cut
at some point, while one has a mirror-geometry version.
With most of them more easily available to
people lucky enough to still be in the EU, that's where the work still needs to
be done, to find out which sets in which sizes were supplied by Fontanini, copied by someone else (who?
With or without a license from Fontanini?
Where?), or sourced from Hong Kong.
Although it's equally likely some may have
been sourced closer to home - the number issued by French or French-based
companies suggest France, but if they were unlicensed it's likely somewhere
more lawless like Yugoslavia or even a factory beyond the 'Euro' law of the
time; maybe Spain, might be in the frame?
*Not really a 'myth' as I don't think anyone's
claimed them all 'made by' Fontanini,
but the origin of manufacture is questionable for the bulk of them, also while
they are all originally Fontanini
sculpts, a few of them have been taken directly from the Japanese Okimono originals.
My recent purchase (95/110mm; higher number
is guesswork due to absence of plinth), cleaned-up and perched temporarily on a
knights plinth - he is clearly marked HONG KONG MADE IN on his kilt-hem -
possibly a UK-issued Lyons Tea
figure?
In both cases (the various premiums or the later Ferrero/Kinder issue), we are talking
throwaway playthings aimed at younger children, and just as one talks of
'Chinoiserie' in English when talking about things which may be Japanese, Thai,
Burmese, Vietnamese or Korean, so I suspect these figures ended-up 'Chinese'
through a combination of laziness, ignorance and a lack of a need to care
terribly how accurate the moniker was.
First appearing in the 1960's, from Fontanini they were quite striking figurines,
especially in the larger sizes, with various shades of faux-ivory (white, cream
and pinkish shades) polythene (PE) they were later made in the same dense vinyl
(PVC) as the rest of the Fonplast work's
output and found their way onto Carrara
marble sample blocks/tiles for tourists to take home - all over the world.
Ageing/antiquing was applied with washes in
black, brown, dark gray or an oxide red-brown, and these often prove to be
water-soluble so on tatty examples can be removed easily to clean the figure
up. This is true for all Fontanini,
Premium and marked HONG KONG versions in the larger sizes, but not always for
the smaller sizes.
Now, the various sets of premiums come in
two sizes, but different finishes and on several different plinth types, and I
can't be too specific with my three here and few in storage, all copies of Fontanini, but not Fontanini! While the Fontanini originals came in at least four or
five sizes and with various - more ornate - plinths.
So we will just go through listing them in
no particular order (I've blocked them together by subject matter where I can -
men first; in an institutionally sexist fashion!), numbering is pointless as different
collectors have used different orders/numbers for different sculpts over the
years, names/titles are equally pointless for the reasons mentioned at the
start - some of them have dozens of 'original' (Asian mythological-) names,
others have never been given a name by Fontanini,
Kinder or any of the premium issuers,
and I don't know the Fontanini cavity
numbers - in any size!
The known sculpts (Kinder titles in red) are:
Male Sculpts
Weapons
- Large curved sword across body [Yang Zhi]
- Arms folded, large sword and
flame/lions-mane headdress
- Holding large sword over and behind head
- With large bullwhip
- Striking downward with sword (Sculpt only
available in larger sizes?)
- Carrying or wrestling an alligator or
crocodile, sword hung at waist (Sculpt only available in larger sizes?)
- Striking at octopus legs with large sword
(sculpt only available in larger sizes?)
- Running with sword or strap in right
hand, rice lunch-box in left (Sculpt only available in larger sizes?)
The guys with bull-whip and crossed-arms
both look to be from more exotic Asian countries, Thai or Siamese maybe, while
a lady from the Oriental Ceramics Society (OCS) informed me the
alligator/crocodile fighter/carrier is a popular Japanese tourist piece? Conversely
the man wrestling three octopus tentacles is clearly very Chinese!
- Basket of Fish, throwing carp over
shoulder [Zhang Shun]
- Giant 'Dragon' fish (or Catfish?)
- Large carp counter-balancing basket of
fish over shoulder pole/yolk
- Giant carp in right hand, fishing rod in
left (sculpt only available in larger sizes?)
Again as a grouping these represent a very
popular Japanese trope, but fish are also associated with various characters
from the myths and legends of the whole pan-Asia region.
The guy on the right has a different base
to mine; squared-off and may be a Fontanini
original from a larger set - all the figures with the more ornate
pierced-plinths are to be taken as such.
Others
- Playing flute, long top-knot
- Two fans
- With a hood/pack on his back
- Wagging finger and stroking his beard
- With fan [Song Jan]
- Holding a bird and a pipe (Sculpt only available in larger sizes?)
A similar sculpt to the flute player but
with a sword was issued as a pirate in the smaller, painted, PVC set by Fontanini.
The last two on the right might/could
be from the 8 Immortals or the Lohan, but their 'signatures' aren't clear
enough, one is known for having his fat belly on show, another for being
learned, but he should be carrying a book, which would look more like a box to
our eyes.
- Low vase - no crown
- Low vase - crown
- High vase - no crown
- High vase - with crown
Are those with finer detailing from Fontanini, the others copies? Note that
with the right-hand pair the vase differs, as does the holding forearm, the
first figure having no lid and a heavier forearm.
- Crowned dancer
- Holding fan up
- Holding folding-fan down [Zhang Shi]
- Shallow baskets on yolk
Was the first one (Thai/Siamese?) issued as
a pair with the crowned chap holding a sword? A variation exists of the second
girl, with the whole figure bending/glancing the opposite ways to the figure
above.
- With flowers [Jiu Tiun Xuan]
- Balls or parcels on a pole/yolk [Pan Qiao Yun]
- Playing small lyre
- Playing large lyre
- Bird resting on a pole over shoulder
- Tai/Siamese dancer with dragon
- Holding open-sieve or pearl-diving
basket? (Sculpt only available in larger sizes)
- With fishing rod and fish on board
(Sculpt only available in larger sizes)
- Bird on branch, stick in left hand,
simple shift/dress (Sculpt only available in larger sizes)
- Playing harp (Sculpt only available in
larger sizes?)
Was the fishing-rod lady paired with the
similarly equipped male sculpt? The pearl-diver could be Polynesian - if that
is what she is representing? When I first found the Harpist I thought it was
one of Fontanini's Christmas/nativity
angels, but she clearly has an Oriental hair-style.
In total - 34 poses, 37 sculpts (that I
know of).
Premium Sets
This is the pose layout/pose count for the
smaller premiums although some larger ones have been used to fill the gaps in Cristianu's
original line-up and a couple have the wrong bases but right plinth (yellow
dots). The green dots are figures with the better bases (arched-filigree edged
hexagonal drums), the red dots are of poorer finish (beaded edges) like my two
above.
Some issuers released these in three
tranches of 6 figures which seems to explain the red dots; different source?
They also seem the commoner poses - from what I can tell!
65mm 70mm (65/85mm)
Hegaxonal 'tablet' Plinths
Body - Cosmetics (UK)
Café
Scarpia - Coffee
Lutin - Haberdashers
Mir
'Nylon' - Washing Powder
Pur
Crem - Cheese
Oval 'basin' Plinths
Café Damoy - Coffee
Café Mokaden - Coffee
Grosjean - Cheese Spread
Unmarked (3 bars) - Unknown
Veuve
Amiot - Sparkling Wines
No Plinth
Montblanc - Dairy Products
Cristianu's original larger set rearranged
to fit the page for a screen-shot with alternate versions of the high-hold jar
lady; again sometimes issued in two tranches of 6 poses.
90mm (80/100mm)
Crenellated Plinths
Cafes
Maurice - Coffee
Lutin - Haberdashers
Rectangular or Wood-look Plinths
Axion - Washing Powder
Café Damoy - Coffee
Geigy
Agchim - Agri-chemicals (UK: CIBA-Geigy)
Laden - Household/Domestic
Appliances
Thé Lyons - Tea (UK; Lyons Tea?)
Valnoble - Wine
Oval 'basin' Plinths
Mir
'Nylon' - Washing Powder
Three of the products known so far have
links to the UK, but with only one known to have issued in the UK (Body Cosmetics), yet the smaller
figurines are quite common over here, and with a domestic appliance firm and
agri-chemical company issuing them, it may turn out that someone like Hoover or Pifco may have given them away at some point? But - that's thinking out loud - not a
fact!
(eight)
Additional-plinth types for the premiums
and smaller Fonatini's; larger
genuine Fontanini's come with more
ornate plinths in several designs (some of which have found their way into the
above screen-caps, they are also sometimes found on Carrara marble plinths
For the sake of completion, the actual
names of the Eight Immortals (Pa Hsien - the Eight Fairies/Eight
Genii), not to be confused with the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup - a bunch
of drunken poets! Wikipedia name first, should you wish to dig further - I'm
about done on mythological Asian celebrities;
- He Xian'gu - Ho Hsien-ku (female)
- Cao Guojiu - Ts'ao Kuo-chiu - Ts'ao
Ching-hsiu
- Li Tieguai - Li T'ieh-Kuai - T'ieh-Kuai Li
(Li with the Iron Crutch) - Li Yüan - Mung Mu - Li Ning-yang
- Lan Caihe - Lan Ts'ai-ho (androgen/sex
unknown, debateable)
- Han Xiangzi - Han Hsiang-tzu - Ch'ing-fu
- Zhang Guolao - Chang-kwo Lao
While a little on the Kinder names;
- Yang Zhi (Sizu - Water Margin character, Eastern Han Dynasty official or EmpressYang Zhi (259–292), Jin Dynasty (265–420))
- Zhang Shun (Water Margin character)
- Song Jan (?)
- Zhang Shi (Prince (died 320, ruler of
the Former Liang state during the Sixteen Kingdoms period or Song Dynasty scholar (1133-1181))
- Jiu Tiun Xuan (?)
- Pan Qiao Yun (?)
Rack
toys - Bazar figures (severn)
In the course of researching this post I also
discovered that the Patron Saint of sodomy is called Chou Wang - I kid you not!
It's apotheosised from the last Emperor of the Shang (surly 'shag' - ed.) dynasty who was a
tyrannical deviant, with an even more deviant concubine! I love this - do you
suppose gays know they have a Patron Saint? Or that he's a wang chewer! It's
priceless; someone tell Donald, he might explode with rage and do the world a
favour! Whoops! There goes my entry visa!
2 comments:
You have some lovely pieces you have here.
Only three of them are mine Jan! Cristianu let me use his shots and someone owned me a few from a previous 'borrow'! The non-Fontanini's are my ex's landlord's and the dog of Fu belongs to someone-else too.
But they've seemed to come together OK . . .
H
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