This post will delve into what the owners of Cybis did to commemorate the 50th decade of the studio’s operation. Some of their choices are rather open to interpretation!
In the autumn of 1939, Boleslaw and Marja Cybis were traveling back to their home in Poland after completing their work on the Polish Pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair; they could not continue past their first port of arrival in Europe because of the German invasion of their homeland. They sailed back to New York before the end of that year. Needing a place to live and work, they chose rental quarters in the Steinway Mansion in Astoria, a suburb of New York City, shortly before the end of 1939. The earliest physically dated product of that studio is from 1940. No items dated 1939 have been discovered, but Joseph and Theresa Chorlton decided to date the original studio’s inception to 1939 instead of 1940. To be fair, 1939 is definitely the year in which Boleslaw and Marja first established a residence in the USA, so we’ll not quibble over whether they were actually making anything during November and December! Even if they were, it was definitely NOT porcelain because Marylin Chorlton – who was one of the New York studio’s first employees – said in a 1970s interview
We didn’t start with porcelains. We were a fine arts studio, doing paintings, tapestries, designing furniture. Then Mr. Cybis found that no one in America was doing porcelain.
The dated-1940 items are not porcelain; they are papka. But we can agree that 1939 was ‘the beginning’, regardless of what was being produced, and that 1989 would indeed mark fifty years. So, let’s see what the studio did in order to celebrate.
The Anniversary Anomalies from 1987 and 1988
A completely inexplicable 1987 ‘50th Anniversary’ piece will be the subject of its own post in the near future, because it is illogical enough to make Spock’s ears curl. The notion that Cybis would market any 1987 item as a “50th Anniversary Edition” made no sense whatsoever; but they also introduced a companion piece in 1988 with the same description! The two pieces in question were the Bride and the Groom, and there are other problematic things about those editions as well. I shall dive into the many issues with these two pieces at a later date. At this point, I don’t regard either of them as Golden Anniversary items.
Golden Anniversary Items in 1989
The Spring 1989 brochure cover specifically describes the new introductions as being a 1989 Golden Anniversary Collection.
On this page we see a special mark (a decal, actually), with the statement
To further commemorate our Golden Anniversary, each sculpture released in 1989 will bear our 50th Anniversary hallmark.
This sounds straightforward, but aren’t there two possible interpretations of the word ‘released’?
If taken as meaning “physically manufactured at Cybis during 1989”, then only those pieces would received the special designation. Any examples that are made after January 1, 1990 would not have that additional mark.
If taken as meaning “this design commemorates our 50th Anniversary in 1989”, then every example of that sculpture/design should have the Anniversary mark on it, regardless of whether it was physically manufactured in 1989, 1990, 2000, or whenever. They should all have it.
Their advertising for the six pieces that comprise the Carousel II series says 50th Anniversary Carousel II, and in the bottom right corner it is also described as Carousel Collection (50th Anniversary Issue). There was never any subsequent (different) edition of this series.
The same advertising says
A Treasury of Birds and Flowers for 1989 is a salute to our origin 50 years ago.
We can assume that “salute”, “issue”, and “commemorate” mean the same thing in this instance; i.e., that all of these should be regarded as ‘Golden/50th Anniversary pieces.’
A separate brochure introduced the 1989 Golden Anniversary Biblical Collection of five sculptures, only two of which were truly new; the other three were re-treads. Did those qualify as being ‘released in 1989’? According to Cybis, they did. Only one piece (The Pope) is captioned as being a 50th Anniversary Commemorative, although the Madonna with Baby (an exact duplicate of the retired 1983 Mother of Love except for the pink rose being replaced by a small white lily) says it is “reintroduced in our 50th year.” The two new designs are The Holy Family bas-relief plaque and The Pope.
This snip marks the official introduction of a third available colorway of the 1980s Nativity series ‘The First Christmas’ as A SPECIAL COMMEMORATIVE ANNIVERSARY EDITION EMBELLISHED IN 24 KARAT GOLD. I do not have the photo that this text refers to but will have more to say about this set below.
This snip from the first page of the Cybis February 1989 price list designates each of these designs by the words Golden Anniversary 1989 in the ‘Year Released’ column. Here is the complete Anniversary-item list, sorted alphabetically.
Baby Duckling
Bunny ‘Bunnykins’
Carnation Boy
Carousel II individual pieces (five animals and the Carousella)
Cleopatra Bust
Daddy’s Little Girl
Golden-Crown Kinglets
Madonna with Baby
Madonna with Bird (Replica Edition)
Madonna embellished with gold (with tilted head, resurrected retired piece)
Mark Antony Bust
Panda with Cub
Preening Baby Swan
Scheherazade
The Holy Family plaque
The Pope in two sizes (14” high and 12.5” high) and color availabilities (color or white bisque)
Water Lily with Frog
The kneeling angel on the cover of the brochure was not a new design; it was an example of the new (50th Anniversary) colorway that was now available on an existing production piece which first appeared years earlier.
So, there were 21 new (or resurrected) ‘50th Anniversary’ Cybis pieces, plus two ‘new’ (in reality, they are resurrections of two formerly-retired 1980s pieces) additions to the Nativity series and an additional colorway for those and all of the previous dozen pieces (see below.)
Golden-Anniversary Items in 1990
The studio decided to introduce three more 50th Anniversary items the following year!
This single-page ad-sheet says that the Carousel Horse ‘Golden Thunder’ is
…the latest in a series of magnificent sculptures commemorating our GOLDEN ANIVERSARY YEAR
There’s the special mark/logo at the lower right, but the copyright date next to it is ©Cybis 1990. The phrase “latest in a series” also indicates that the studio wasn’t quite finished with that marketing opportunity. However, no new Anniversary items appeared after 1990.
The other limited-edition Golden Anniversary piece was Cinderella, Belle of the Ball who appeared in Spring 1990. She has a rather ‘interesting’ production history which is detailed in her own Archive post.
The studio’s October 1990 price list has a subtle change regarding the Anniversary pieces: In the ‘Year Released’ column it now simply says Golden Anniversary rather than Golden Anniversary 1989. This was to account for the 1990 late arrivals Golden Thunder and Cinderella ‘Belle of the Ball’.
The third item was an Easter Egg (embellished with gold) which has ‘Golden Ann. Commemorative’ in the Year-Released column. This is actually their 1985 Egg done in gold-on-white instead of its original orange-and-yellow. So, we’ll say that three new Anniversary items were added in 1990, making a final Anniversary total – not counting the new Nativity colorway itself – of 26 if we include the two added Nativity pieces themselves.
I do not have any 1991 or 1992 Cybis price lists (I wish I did.) Oddly, their March 1993 list failed to indicate that Bunnykins, the Madonna with Baby, and the Madonna with Bird (Replica) are Golden Anniversary items. But the others are identified as such, which makes me think that those three were accidental omissions in that column. The Anniversary colorway of the Nativity items is now indicated simply by a (G) following the name. Their next list, which was printed in November of that year, permanently eliminated any mention of introduction years or Anniversary designations for anything.
About that Mark/Decal/Stamp….
Now that we know which Cybis (non-Nativity) pieces were initially designated as ‘50th Anniversary’, we are in a position to deduce whether the 50th Anniversary decal/mark was applied to ALL of them, all the time, or only to those which were MANUFACTURED in 1989. We only need to look at some examples that have come up for sale, and see how they are marked: If we find some with the decal and others without it, that would indicate that the studio only applied it to their 1989 production items. Let’s see what’s out there:
Baby Duckling – found one, but with no photo of the signature area
Bunny ‘Bunnykins’ – found one, with the mark
Carnation Boy – found one with the mark, and another with limited photos which means we don’t know
Carousel Horse ‘Golden Thunder’ – found three with the mark, one with no photo, and one with no mark but unusual circumstances
Cinderella ‘Belle of the Ball’ – found one, with the mark
Cleopatra Bust – found three, and all have the mark
Madonna with Bird (Replica) – found two, neither had photos of the signature area
Preening Baby Swan – found two, with the mark
Scheherazade – found two, with the mark
I was not able to find photos of any sales of any of these online: Daddy’s Little Girl, Egg Embellished with Gold, Golden-Crown Kinglets, Holy Family plaque, Madonna with Baby (this is the version that has a white lily, not a pink rose), Madonna (with tilted head and white veil with gold accents), Panda with Cub, Water Lily with Frog, and The Pope. If any reader owns any of these, will you let me know whether yours has the special stamp (and when you bought it, if bought new)?
The problem with working backwards like this is, of course, that we can’t know when any of the Anniversary-marked pieces were physically made. There are eight open editions that I could not find sales of; you’d think that more of those less-expensive pieces would have sold and later been re-sold. That said, during the 1990s the studio had fewer and fewer retailers until finally none remained. It’s possible that they simply did not sell many of them. In the case of the three 1989 madonna issues, and the egg, perhaps many collectors already had the original version and had no desire for a slightly-tweaked later one which they might even have regarded as a ‘money grab.’ The Pope would of course appeal only to a specific collector base; the Kinglets and the Panda with Cub are, frankly, not that great in terms of execution.
Anniversary Edition/Colorway Pieces
As mentioned above, in 1989 the studio described the new gold-decorated colorway as a ‘Special Commemorative Anniversary Edition.’ At that time there were 14 items, two of which (the Small Lamb and the Nativity Angel II) were 1989 introductions although neither of them were new designs. The Nativity Angel II is a rather awkward re-working of the retired 1982 Angel ‘Annunciation’, and the Small Lamb is simply the retired 1981 Muffy Fluffy White Sheep with gold-painted hooves in that color, rather than grey.
If the white-and-gold examples do actually represent an Anniversary series, then logic dictates that those should have the 50th Anniversary decal on them. But do they? I search among images of old eBay listings, looking for examples that were painted in the Anniversary colorway, and found:
Camel I = found one; has no mark.
Guardian Angel 2001 = found one, but no photo of underside
Little Angel, resurrected and added to the series in the early 2000s = found one; has no mark.
Nativity Angel I, aka Kneeling Nativity Angel = found one, with the decal (which surprised me.)
Nativity Angel II (the 1989 intro) = found one but there was no photo of underside
Nativity Angel III – found one but there was no photo of underside.
If any Archive reader can be of help in determining whether some or all of the white-with-gold Nativity pieces were marked as Anniversary items, there is a contact form link at the bottom of this post.
I hope to eventually spot examples of all of the ‘Anniversary’ designs in order to determine whether Cybis applied the special decal only to the ones made in 1989, or to every white-and-gold example of those designs that they made, regardless of the piece’s manufacturing date.
Name Index of Cybis Sculptures
Visual Index (for human figures/busts only)
About the Cybis Reference Archive
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