It's not every day that one of these beautiful, 1940's countertop mannequins show up around these parts, but I'm sure glad I was in the right place and at the right time when one did! Venus is a shapely, 30" tall female display mannequin statue, and fashionably posed to model actual miniature versions of Venus brand products made of real fabric (in this case a skin-tone corset, see photo close-ups towards the end of this post below.) Her overall body form is composed of a molded Rubberlite material, hence the extensive cracking all over, likely from years of sun and heat exposure in store front windows, as well as other various destructive display and storage elements. Her base is even a little warped as if at one point she was possibly melting sideways (!!), and as you can see, a previous owner attempted to fix her by adding a slanted piece of wood underneath said base. It sort of works. Sort of. Anyway, a few of my friends believe that her cracking condition gives her extra story and character. I think it sort of makes her look like she's carved out of wood, and when I initially set eyes upon her at the antique mall, I imagined a much more attractive mash-up between the mounted ship figurehead of Hera from Jason and the Argonauts (1963), with the living wooden figurehead from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973.) Check out another va-va-va-version of Venus from a 2017 auction site, by CLICKING HERE!
3 comments:
The cracks make her look like a super cool 50s female hysteria villain, like The Wasp Women.
A whole bunch of dudes pick her up in the bar and she needs their spleens to survive, and suddenly she's cracking and bits of flesh fall off and she tears out the guys spleen.
Boys are taught no sex before marriage and some guy with a directors chair makes a couple bugs. Win/win!
Wow! I have been pretty stoked to get just that awesome miniature corset. The full-figure mini-mannequin is almost too good to be true. I feel like wood sculptures tend to crack along the grain, so the lines run sort of parallel. Except for cinders, I guess. I'm kinda with Brian here: She reminds me of some American International reptile woman. I love it!
PS, Picture five is my hands down fave.
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