The porcelains that freelance artist Gertrude Fass created for Cybis are only one part of her artistic legacy. Among her other endeavors were wonderful portrait busts in terracotta clay. This material was among the first that humans used to create ‘fired’ objects (as opposed to objects made from natural unfired clay) and the word itself means ‘baked earth’ in Italian.
Terracotta Busts and Figures
We’ll begin with a series of busts based on iconic works of art.
Based on Child in a Straw Hat by Mary Cassatt.
Based on a Modigliani portrait of a woman circa 1918.
Based on a Rembrandt portrait of a young woman.
Based on The Ingenue by Auguste Renoir.
Based on Jane Avril by Toulouse-Lautrec.
A portrait of the character Sonia from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
This bust of Jimmy Carter was created during his presidency (1977-1981).
This charming portrait is titled ‘The Littlest Cowboy.’
Colored terracotta bust of George Fass.
Portrait bust of the artist’s son.
Portrait bust of the artist’s daughter.
Portrait bust of the artist’s granddaughter.
Terracotta figure of a Victorian lady with a muff.
Glazed terracotta figure titled ‘fat lady waiting patiently.’
The artist, the model, and the work of art.
Portrait Dolls
Mrs. Fass created beautifully detailed portrait dolls based on life (the first two shown) and on works of art. Most of them were made purely for the joy of creation and for giving as gifts.
Portrait doll of ‘A.J.’.
Portrait doll of Alice.
Portrait doll based on Gainsborough’s 1777 portrait of Mrs. Mary Graham, which is in the permanent collection of the National Galleries of Scotland.
Portrait doll based on Goya’s early-1800s portrait of Jose Costa y Bonells, the young son of one of the artist’s major patrons. He was nicknamed ‘Pepito’, the name by which the portrait is known; it’s in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Thomas Lawrence portrait of ‘Pinkie’ and Thomas Gainsborough’s portrait of ‘The Blue Boy’ reside in the same gallery in the Huntington Library & Gardens in San Marino, California.
During the early 1990s, Gertrude Fass created this portrait doll of Pinkie and offered it to the Huntington Library as a fund-raising/promotional item. The Library declined, but in 1994 the Tujays Artist Doll Company produced Pinkie as a limited edition of only 50 dolls.
Tujays was a partnership of two sisters, Janet and Joyce (hence, “two Js” as a company name) Miko; they produced heirloom-quality dolls with an historical flair and fine attention to detail. Pinkie is 14.5” tall and came with a Tujays hangtag identifying Gertrude Fass as the designer. The accompanying stand bears a small brass plaque with the doll’s name.
This companion Blue Boy doll must have been produced by Tujays as well, based on this photo which shows the identical stand but with the brass name plate in a different location compared to the stand for Pinkie. I wanted to reach out to the owners to ask if they produced any other Gertrude Fass dolls, but learned that Janet died in 2002 and Joyce passed away in 2023. If any reader happens to have any other Tujays dolls identified as being designed by Gertrude Fass, will you let me know so that I can add them here? There is a contact form link at the end of each Archive post.
Paintings and Drawings
Oil portrait of a young Greek sailor.
‘Two Mexican Guitarists’ in pastels (?).
Watercolor portrait of a little girl.
Pencil sketch of the artist’s baby daughter.
Two pencil drawings of a sleeping baby.
Victorian Legacy Bronzes
Victorian Legacy was the name of the company that Gertrude Fass established for her limited-edition bronze sculpture series during the 1990s. Based in Worcester, Massachusetts, the actual bronze castings were done by Domenico Ranieri at his sculpture foundry in New York. (Arturo Di Modica, creator of the famous ‘Wall Street Bull’, once worked for Ranieri.) The subjects of the Victorian Legacy sculptures were authors and other notables of the Victorian era.
Anthony Trollope, 16.5” tall. Trollope was Gertrude’s favorite author, and the creation of a sculpture honoring him was the impetus that led to the birth of the Victorian Legacy enterprise. Princeton University has the #4 sculpture of the edition of 250, in the holdings of their Firestone Library. The fourth photo shows Gertrude Fass’ signature (G J Fass) on the back of the base section.
Charles Dickens seated figure, a 12.5” high edition of 250. The bases of the Victorian Legacy pieces are made of black micarta, a material that was invented in 1910 by Westinghouse. It is a composite of organic material such as paper or cloth, bonded together by resin which makes the finished product almost entirely impervious to environmental stressors such as moisture, while being far more lightweight (and less expensive) than marble.
Frederick Douglass, an edition of 250, 13.5” high. The famed abolitionist, author and orator died 130 years ago this week.
Charles Darwin, an edition of only 100, 16.5” tall. I’m not sure why this edition was a smaller quantity than the others.
Clay model of Jane Austen, which was produced in bonded marble rather than in bronze. Bonded marble is also known as ‘cold cast marble’, ‘synthetic marble’, or ‘reconstituted marble’ and is a mixture of actual marble powder (between 80% and 90%) with a resin polymer bonding agent. The weight of a bonded marble product can be quite close to that of natural marble, depending on the percentage of marble powder that was used, but it is much more affordable. Jane is 15” tall and was an edition of 250. The Sculpture House Casting studio mentioned in the brochure has existed for more than 100 years and is owned by Michael Perrotta. The back cover of the brochure mentions two of her sculptures for Cybis: King David and Othello.
I do not have a photo of the brochure for Mark Twain, but I assume that he was probably the same size as Trollope and Darwin (16.5”) and was likely an edition of 250.
Postscript
Gertrude Fass lived in New Jersey until the 1990s when she moved to California to be closer to her daughter’s family. In 1997 her play Love Among the Centralians was published by Players’ Press as a 71-page softcover manuscript.
This photo was taken in 1999.
Gertrude Fass passed away two decades ago, on March 6, 2005, in Los Angeles at the age of 95. She is interred in Mount Hebron Cemetery in Kew Gardens, NY, in the family plot with her husband, parents and extended family. I’m extremely grateful to be able to recognize and honor her work and her valuable contributions to the Cybis porcelain studio. My sincere thanks to her family for all of the information and photos to share!
Name Index of Cybis Sculptures
Visual Index (for human figures/busts only)
About the Cybis Reference Archive
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