The Cybis porcelain studio issued two main types of retail sculptures: numbered limited editions which were made in a specified quantity, and un-numbered designs that continued to be produced and offered at the will (or whim) of the studio. Those were termed ‘Open Editions’, and when the studio decided to cease offering a design, it was said to be ‘Retired.’
The general perception was that limited-edition designs were more valuable; they were usually also more complex, and often (but not always) a bit larger in overall size. They were also usually more expensive.
There is no known instance of a Cybis open edition having been upgraded to the status of limited edition ….but there was one that began its production life as a limited edition and suffered a demotion to being merely an open edition. How embarrassing!
Jumbles and Friend was sculpted by in-house designer William Pae. According to Mr. Pae, his creation was inspired by an illustration in a turn-of-the-century book of nursery rhymes that was in the studio’s library.
The combination of clown + feathered colleagues was not unusual, as this circa-1900 advertisement for the famed Barnum & Bailey Circus shows.
During the 1950s, popular artist Arthur Sarnoff created several illustrations in the circus-clown genre. This one is the closest to Jumbles and Friend.
This is how Jumbles appears in the Spring 1985 new-introductions brochure from Cybis. It clearly states that this is a declared edition of 750. Although it does not state the price (the brochures and catalogs usually did not, because retail prices were always subject to increases over time), we know that it was $675 at that time. So, when was Jumbles and Friend demoted?
Unfortunately, I do not have any Cybis price lists between 1986 and 1988. And on that February 1988 price list, under the Circus Collection heading, Jumbles and Friend is shown as an Open edition! The retail price is now $725, which shows that the downgrade did not produce the same effect on that aspect of the sculpture. The 1986 Cybis catalog – which is the last one that they ever produced – shows it as a limited edition in the photo caption, but that catalog would have gone to press sometime in 1985.
This indicates that the decision to downgrade this piece to an Open edition must have been made in either 1986 or 1987. Just to make sure that the 1988 list designation was not a typo, I also checked my copies of subsequent price lists from Cybis.
The Fall 1990 list has this as Open, now at $875.
The Fall 1993 list has maintained that price point, but erroneously titles the piece as Jumbles and Friends w/duck, which makes it sound as if Jumbles and his pals may be showing up on your doorstep with tonight’s dinner entrée. (I’ve heard about ‘friends with benefits’, but ‘friends with duck’ is a new one. Peking, anyone?)
The Fall 1995 list has raised the retail price to $950. Notice that the limited-edition Circus Horse Trio ‘Showtime’ costs only $25 more (even though it is a very large declared limited edition; ironically, I have never seen one of those come up for sale online.)
The Fall 1997 list edits Jumbles’ name to Jumbles and Friend (Clown with Duck) which at least is accurate! The piece has also price-leapfrogged above the circus horses, because it is now $1075 (versus $995) …even though only an Open edition.
The May 1999 price list was translated essentially verbatim into the studio’s new website “shop” (I put the word in quotes because one could not actually BUY a piece online; it was more of an online price list.) Here, Jumbles – still Open – has been upped to $1095.
This poses the question: At what point in time did the studio stop offering this as a limited edition? And more importantly: Why?
The logical answer is that there was far less interest in the piece, from collectors, than Cybis expected. But that scenario had happened before, with other sculptures, and the response was to reduce the size of the declared edition – either to a lower quantity overall, or to only that number of orders that had already been received from retailers, and thereby closing the edition early. There are numerous cases of Cybis revising a declared edition size downward in this way, and sometimes quite dramatically. Why not do the same with Jumbles?
It would be ideal to find a Jumbles and Friend that is not numbered, still in the hands of its original owner, and ask that person if they recall the year that they bought it. But here’s the thing: I have not yet come across an example that is NOT numbered!
The highest-numbered example of Jumbles and Friend that has so far emerged for sale online (as of this writing) has been #257. I did find three old eBay citations on Worthpoint in which the seller did not mention the sculpture number and did not have a photograph of it either. This may or may not mean that those were not numbered. As of now, we know that they produced at least 257 of these before demoting it to an Open, un-numbered edition. This means that, within (at most) the 30-month period between Spring 1985 and the end of 1987, the studio received at least that many retailer orders for Jumbles… a minimum of between 8 and 9 per month, on average. This is assuming that the demotion took effect in late 1987; but it could well have happened sooner. That number may not have been the level of interest that the studio was originally hoping for, but it isn’t terrible either.
Of course, it is possible that the ‘Open’ price-list description of Jumbles was indeed a typo, originally made on one of the 1986 or 1987 price lists and then went completely unnoticed for the next 12 or 13 years (!) – although you would think that someone, at some point, would have caught and corrected it. But I suppose that stranger things have happened….
It is more likely that someone in Management simply decided, one gloomy day in 1986 or 1987, that Jumbles didn’t deserve the status of ‘limited edition’ – for whatever reason. This seems particularly odd to me because the studio had released a different clown sculpted by William Pae, Frollo the Juggler, as a limited edition in 1981. One might argue that they didn’t want to have two limited-edition clowns in the lineup…except that Frollo’s edition was closed sometime between 1983 and 1988. (Drat those missing price lists!) So, it was unlikely that in 1985 there was any overlap between those two.
One has to feel a bit sorry for Jumbles, because nobody likes to feel disrespected (even if they are only made of porcelain!) or that they have gone ‘from hero to (almost) zero.’ These do regularly appear on eBay and at brick-and-mortar auction houses, as the Cybis collections of yesteryear are gradually dispersed. I will be keeping an eye on the sculpture numbers, so that perhaps someday I will be able to solve the ‘when’ part of the mystery – even though the ‘why’ will always elude us!
Update, April 2024: I have now discovered another limited-demoted-to-open-edition Cybis piece, which means that Jumbles has a second friend…in that respect, that least!
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