The final week of October seems an appropriately spooky time for a discussion of the 'body snatching' that occasionally occurred within the design process of Cybis porcelains. Despite my fanciful terminology, it wasn't always an entire sculpture body that was appropriated for use in another; sometimes it was only certain parts. Because most porcelain sculptures [...]
The Cybis studio occasionally took an individual element from a 'group' sculpture and offered it as a separate retail edition under a different name. They were almost always animal studies; for example, the buck in the White Tailed Deer trio was offered as the single Deer in Motion, and one of the Charging Buffaloes was [...]
It's usually easy to identify the story behind each of the Cybis porcelain 'character' studies, but there's one in particular that threw me for a loop at first ….as well as having an unfinished tale of her own. Fleurette was introduced in 1981 as a limited edition of 1000 at a price of $725; by [...]
One of many literary works that inspired Cybis porcelain designs was Mark Twain's tale of The Prince and the Pauper. In fact, there ended up being more than one version of those two lads, spanning a full decade. Each sculpture was sold separately. Both were designed by Lynn Klockner Brown. The Prince The first (standard) [...]
The small white bisque medallion originally designed to accent the facing page of the Cybis Folio One collection of Native American lithographs was given several subsequent 'second lives' as a separate retail item. This medallion design is a rendition of the Comanche 'Indomitable Spirit' portrait drawing by Boleslaw Cybis. At the time of issue of [...]
The only non-porcelain retail offering from the Cybis studio was a 1970s art issue called the Folio One. This was a limited edition reproduction series taken from nine conté drawings of Native Americans made by Boleslaw Cybis in 1939. Conté is the name of a type of crayon made of compressed charcoal or graphite mixed [...]
This final category of religious studies in Cybis porcelain looks at their saint figures as well as miscellaneous items such as plaques and holy water fonts. The vast majority of the items shown below date from the 1950s. All of them were open (non-limited) editions except for the 1981 limited edition of Saint Peter. The [...]
Despite the fact that the Cybis studio produced numerous religious studies since the early 1950s, they only produced one papal portrait: a bust of Pope John Paul II. There was only a single design/mold but it was produced in four separate editions and sizes at different times. All editions were titled The Pope and differ [...]
One of the most ambitious porcelain works by the post-1950s Cybis studio was also perhaps their most unusual. This is the elaborate chess set that was first created during the 1970s, although there were actually three versions produced over the course of the next two decades. The story of the Cybis Chess Set began in [...]
This sculpture is one of only two instances of a modern Cybis Studio porcelain that was based directly upon an original Boleslaw Cybis painting. Although the name of both works was simply The Bride, most collectors typically refer to the sculpture as 'The Polish Bride.' The original portrait is an oil on canvas, painted by [...]
THE CYBIS ARCHIVE 