Vintage view: Art Deco figurines

Kya deLongchamps highlights three artists who brought us the best of decadent Art Deco sculpture in the 20s and 30s.

Art Deco figurines have retained a body of love struck admirers for almost a century.

Even if the heady 1980s obsession with the era has backed off in the market, these Broadway belles, Russian prima ballerinas, and high-kicking society flirts, dance on.

With authentic top class pieces married off into private collections, the reproduction and fakes have confused worthy debutants with low-ranking but often pretty, magnificently-made imposters.

It’s hard to even imagine today the naughty excitement of having such a daring young flapper lost in the gin-fuelled frenzy of the Charleston, or walking her Borzoi, a fresh wind wrapping her skirts tight to her honed legs and breasts, or the response it would have elicited in the Edwardian mind.

It’s little wonder even government ministers might have nubile young things posing seductively among their paperwork.

Frozen in an athletic, classical pose, it was just about acceptable (referencing Greek and Roman art and Renaissance paintings), to strip these lovelies right down to their nothings and still stage her, 20th century bobbed hair and all, in the drawing-room.

There is one slightly sinister note in all this mid-century physical celebration — the idealisation of a firmly Aryan ideal, at a point between the wars when Fascism and ideas of the purity of race were on the rise.

In Germany the factories of Rosenthal and Goldsheider produced sporting figures in ceramic, but it was the bronze and ivory figurines that took the market by storm.

These were not the fainting romantic females of the Art Nouveau period presented in popular small statuary, but strong, independent women with their sexuality firmly on show and in their control.

Three names are worth remembering in this genre of scantily-clad teases, and even if you can never afford a piece, it’s worth enjoying the erotic show at any good Parisian antique gallery or on a trip to somewhere like the V&A, where you can see a selection of the best from sculptors and foundries across Europe and the US.

Lesser makers were prolific in their respectful copying of styles, so you might pick up a single statue or a period French clock garniture with your own belle, modelled on these goddesses of Deco design in bronze or spelter, for just a couple of hundred euro.

Austrian sculptor Joseph Lorenzl (1892-1950) is placed somewhat uncomfortably right in the middle of the Nazi years, where his bronze figures, often on tip-toe, balance on tall bases of variegated marble.

He also worked in a precious and screamingly expensive combination of gold, silver and ivory, termed chryselephantine by the ancient Greeks.

Lorenzl worked with a cold painter called Crejo who would further beautify the bronze ladies with painted decoration to their costume, and the best of Lorenzl pieces carry Crejo’s signature too. Lorenzl figures are often somewhat elasticated beyond natural limb lengths.

Prices for his work range from €3,000 to as much as €15,000 depending on rarity and condition, making them the relatively less expensive of our three masters.

Polish off the patina and any bronze can fall to a third of its potential worth.

Ferdinand Preiss (1882-1943) was a German artist, best known for the exquisite detailing of this figures.

The nails, lips, eyes and even the waves of the hair in these ivory and bronze maidens are breathtakingly realised, with faces given a wash of colour to rouge the cheeks and inject real, beating life to his ethereal subjects.

Unlike some sculptors, Preiss’ cabinet sculptures, clock mounts and lamp-stands tend towards anatomically correct proportions, with more real weight spread over the gilded muscle than say Lorenzl.

An ivory carver from the age of 15, it’s little wonder the work on this material is so astonishing, with workers under his eye expected to meet exacting standards as the firm grew.

Look for a PK foundry mark (Preiss-Kassler) and an incised signature on the base of marble or onyx of F Preiss. Prices for an innocent little ivory child by Preiss start at around €5,000, but if you want say a weighty, wonderful Champagne Girl, expect to treat her to a bubbly €25,000 or more.

His work is heavily reproduced in bronze, base metals and resin with the addition of rusty nuts to the support, and spray on dust, so be warned unless you’re looking for a decorator’s piece. Any damage to the ivory of an original figure, especially the face, is regarded as serious.

If I had to choose — then it would be between the divines of the diversely talented Franco-Russian genius Erté (Remain de Tirtof- RT), and Demetre Chiparus (1886-1947). They are both museum quality only, but my money is on the Romanian contribution to the bevy of loose-limbed lovelies.

Two things to remember with Chiparus are his interest in Egypt, (a fantasy rendering of tales from the Far East in general), and the height of added decoration exacted on his sculptures.

Transmitting the flash, fever, extravagance and throbbing drama of the cabaret, stage and smoke-filled hedonistic night-clubs of the 20s and 30s, these are magnificent, highly-stylized, over the top divas of the Art Deco market.

Chiparus was influenced by the athletic postures of field sports such as javelin throwing and the evolution and shapes of modern dance performed barefoot at the Folies Bergere and most especially the innovative work taking place at the Ballet Russes.

Individual dancers and the costumes they wore in key performances including those of Nijinsky and Ida Rubenstein, were identifiable in Chiparus’ small and more extravagant works. He sometimes included several members of a corp de ballet, real or imaginary.

There are collections of Chiparus’ work both in Europe and America, where individual pieces achieve six figures with ease, even with new regulations regarding the sale of any antiques, including ivory, across borders without firm certification.