DRAWING AND PAINT

Figurines are small pieces of sculpture that don’t require an entire room to do them justice.  A whatnot will hold one exquisite bone china figurine or an entire collection, painted and glazed just so to reach a lifelike appearance.  Perhaps an early childhood memory stirs when you have your own figurine collection, because you remember your family’s shelves filled with small fragile shapes that you ‘couldn’t touch!’  At that time of your development, you could see the bright colors of a clown figurine and naturally wanted to finger his scintillating costume.  Now that you’re older, you appreciate the delicacy of a figurine’s craftsmanship and can be trusted to ‘touch’ and hold your own bits of glazed or forged wonders as you savor your own collection.

When your artistic taste developed, you discovered that china was not the only medium for figurine art.  There were patinas to be enjoyed on brass pieces and hand-carved wooden statuettes, along with other shapes, figurative or abstract.  The one thing that they all have in common is their small scale, representative of the subject in a miniature form.  Figurines claim our imagination almost in the way of dolls or stuffed animals, tinier forms of humans or creatures that we can place in a tableau whichever way we like.  We can make them off-center on the knickknack shelf, we can perch them on its edge, we can shift their scales from extremely miniature to a hand’s span all the way up to a fairly large one-foot dimension.  The one thing that we cannot do is ignore them when they are in a room, because of their eye-catching quality.  We feel the need to arrange them according to scale, or color, or theme.  It wouldn’t do to have a languorous reclining nymph next to the clown statuette.  We discover our own sense of order when we arrange figurines.

If you want to truly add to your knowledge of figurines, you will want to learn about different sorts of clays and firing techniques, similar to acquiring the techniques of throwing a clay pot and preparing it for the kiln.  This knowledge can add to your enjoyment of your collection, nearly as much as learning about the famous styling houses for figurines, such as Royal Doulton, Lladro and Hummel.  Each season, the designers for figurines bring forth their offerings of poses and characters, worked in bone china or porcelain or bisque. 

How the figurine has its color decoration applied translates to a more refined knowledge of the crafting of these delicate little pieces of art.  For instance, cobalt and copper may be applied under the glaze on a figurine, or enamels used once the glazing is complete.  Celadon ware contains an iron in its glaze to give it its distinctive look.  And if you desire the elegant look of porcelain, know that porcelain is fired at a higher degree than earthenware to make the body of the piece non-porous.  Firing also imputes a greater sheen to the finished piece, as vitrification occurs at the high temperature and the outer glaze turns to a glassy shine.  When you consider the fine craftsmanship which goes into turning out an exquisite figurine, you will treasure your collection even more.  It shows off your personality like nothing else does.