A recent observation by a sharp-eyed Archive reader regarding the sculpture Cree Indian ‘Magic Boy’ and its two Cybis editions has blossomed into a fascinating in-depth examination of this particular piece’s production history. It turns out that this design has had a rather unique ‘life story’ in several respects! The first unusual thing about ‘Magic [...]
Although most overviews of Cybis porcelains are arranged by sculpture type (genre and/or edition) it can also be interesting to look at them from a production standpoint: i.e., what the studio introduced for retail and when. The list below aims to do just that, arranged by retail introduction year and broken down into limited and [...]
Now that we’ve finished butterfly-catching, why not do some ‘crown-collecting’? Cybis used a crown in 41 different sculptures, plus one honorable-mention piece – but, somewhat surprisingly, only 16 of those items were depictions of royal persons. We can divide the crowned Cybis sculptures into five categories: male royalty, female royalty (more or less), ballet studies, [...]
Unlike several other porcelain studios, such as Boehm and Connoisseur, Cybis never made a butterfly the subject of any of their sculptures. That doesn’t mean that they weren’t fluttering about in some of the Cybis designs, however. The studio utilized two particular butterfly molds, plus four others that were used only once; and there are [...]
One of the early posts in the Archive (#26) spotlighted the Flower Bouquet of the United States that was created by Cybis for the 1964 World’s Fair held in New York. This new post expands upon and replaces that one, because of a significant amount of new information recently discovered. The Creation of the Flower [...]
One of the most bizarre instances of ‘Cybis-design appropriation’ – and there are quite a few of them shown in the Hall of Shame, by the way – recently came to light unexpectedly. One would typically expect a deliberate Cybis knockoff to have been the product of some fly-by-night (or at least, offshore) company looking [...]
January 2023 update: If you are looking for actual numbers to determine the current market value of a limited-edition Cybis, the Recent Selling Prices page will be more helpful to you. However, if you are trying to determine the value of a non-limited piece, the post you are now reading may give you the insight [...]
Until recently, if someone had asked me whether Cybis ever produced any porcelain jewelry, I would have answered in the negative. None of their price lists or other publications included any such items, and none appeared on their web site. Several years ago I did come across two small stickpins that were described as “an [...]
Although the vast majority of Cybis porcelains were sold as individual sculptures, the studio did sometimes market certain pieces as having a specific relationship to another. However, the instances of them selling two items as an actual pair were relatively few. The various ‘related’ sculptures are best described as pairs, companions, series and sets. First, [...]
The Cybis studio officially closed its doors on Norman Avenue in Trenton in late 2019, approximately fifty years after first occupying that custom-built structure. However, there had been no actual production activity for at least the preceding decade; the last new-design introduction had been a single piece, the Carousel Reindeer, in late 2008. The property [...]
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