Well, I guess my post title isn't exactly correct, considering the only thing about her that is actually turtle-esque would be the shell, but still-- this is a rare, early 1900's antique German bisque "bathing beauty" figurine, also referred to as a "naughty lady", as you will see when you remove the top half of her dainty turtle shell. Made by a number of different companies, so she's a little hard to pinpoint exactly here (plus, no visible markings), m'lady could be used as a small trinket box, and was actually produced in a variety of revealing styles, some with her bloomers closed and completely covering her bare arse, as well as another variation with a little brown teddy bear laid across her exposed backside cleavage. This would have been an instant no-brainer purchase for me except the steep price tag (once again) waging war alongside some rather unfortunate, sloppy painted facial features. Still a neat find, and wonderful to see and hold one in my hand after years of ogling pictures of them in collector books and online antique sites.
6 comments:
So is that paint original, or a touch up job? I don't know anything about these figures, but the paint does have a weird kind of charm to it, even though it's pretty sloppy. Her front has a kind of freckled look!
I know it's a novelty but I'm wondering what I could keep in there. A couple hard candies? Some change? A pair of mini panties?
Lil' Miss Turtle-tail (or is that Tortoise-tail, I get them mixed up) reminds me of the mini statuettes for sale from the 1980's through the late 1990's Imported from Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Both the modern mini statuettes and this lovely lady have the same quick, good enough paintjob on the body and face, but the lady has the appeal of European production and risqué artwork, while the modern ones were of a mundane nature (a seated lady with a fan, a gent strumming on a guitar, etc.)
My intent is not to detract from this lovely lady from Victorian times, only to recognize that even in the days of our grandparents and great grandparents there were inexpensive, but cute, items available for sale for those with an eye for unique items.
The sculpt here is pretty nice all over, but I am especially impressed with the turtle shell, top and bottom.
This thing is terribly cute at face value, but when I really start to think about it, it's pretty strange. What an interesting mind it took to pursue peekaboo cheesecake to this endpoint. What was the process there? Did that sculptor start with the turtle and then step back, scrutinize, and say to themselves, now how do I get a little nudity into this? Or was it the other way around? I'd like to think that sculptor had just gotten sick of all the usual-type mermaids and came up with contraption instead.
Well, that was pretty much the point of these old bathing beauty figurines— naked ladies in a variety of different poses, and it eventually,just expanded with morphing them into animal / reptile / bird / fish etc hybrids
A thought popped into my quirky thinking process- could this be a risqué item one of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would own but keep hidden?
Har!
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