International studio (82.1925)

mteRDACionAL

Mrs. Totten s Gharnxincj Statuettes

7—7rom the most remote Porcelainfigurines that pre- vian trained craftsworkers
I times in recorded his- , , . • who have made the porce-

-L . _ serve an age-old tradition in T • + + ++ ■ • *■

tory men and women _ & lam statuettes originating
have liked to see themselves classical and Contemporary in this country,
represented in those little models The work of Mrs. George
figures we call statuettes. Oakley Totten, Jr., is a pure
Excavations in Southern product of the Scandinavian
Babylonia have shown us this was so in ancient school for all of her work heretofore was done in a
Sumeria; similar work along the Nile has given studio in a factory in Stockholm. Trained as an
us little figures of boatmen on the river craft, artist in the Academic des Beaux Arts in Stock-
brewers and bakers at _ holm and later in

work three thousand

years ago; the Tana-
gra figures let us see
how the Greeks
dressed and carried on
some of their every-
day vocations; and in
more recent times Ger-
many, France, Eng-
land and the Scandi-
navian countries have
an almost unbroken
succession of this tra-
dition in their porce-
lains. The type of
little figures held in
mind here are not
those concerned with
religion or death. It
is solely that repre-
senting daily life either
in its realistic or ro-
mantic aspect.

Of the classes of
these porcelain statu-
ettes in particular that
have achieved the
place of being ranked
as art objects there
are naturally lapses in
point of time and in

Paris, Mrs. Totten had
made a marked suc-
cess with her picture
books for children un-
til she took up sculp-
ture. As this artist
always conceives her
sculpture in colors it
was very natural she
should incline toward
creating these porce-
lain statuettes.

During those four
yrears of work in the
factory studio in
Stockholm, Mrs. Tot-
ten made three hun-
dred of these figurines,
a number that is testi-
mony in itself to the
strength of the native
revival in this com-
bination of the sculp-
tor's art and the pot-
ter's craft. Her na-
tionality gave her an
inclination to create
subjects or groups of
folklore or fairy-tale
character as in the
figure of "The Blue

. T * • • • SALOME BY MRS. TOTTEN r> • I )) .1

their continuity m bird or the very

various countries. Within comparatively recent amusing and charming "The Swineherd and the

years there has been a distinguished revival of Princess," the gleaming little pigs in this group

interest in the porcelain statuette especially in being quite as roguish as the tiny golden crown of

the Scandinavian countries, in England and in the Princess naughtily flirting with the Swineherd,

the United States. America's contribution to this The inspiration of her art is purely literary. Its

variety of the potter's craft has been compara- background ranges from the Bible to the two

tively limited and decidedly imitative, England sources just mentioned with an occasional glance

setting the mode for us in the late eighteenth and at social history represented by story-telling types,

early nineteenth centuries while in our part of To the first division belongs her "Salome" and

this contemporary revival it is chiefly Scanchna- the very distinguished group "Herod and Salome,"

one Jorty

NOVEMBER I 925