The recent discovery of part of a circa-1950s Cybis wholesale price list contained a series of single Nativity figures that are entirely different from the 1950s Nativity Murals shown in the studio's published catalogs. This did not come as a complete surprise to me, though, because in 2021 I came across an unfamiliar figurine marked [...]
Among the unexpected odds and ends that appeared in the 2019 liquidation auctions of most of the backstock of the Cybis studio was a small piece that I’d not seen mentioned in any of their advertising: a representation of the tablet(s) said to have been brought by Moses from the mountaintop. They are variously referred [...]
Isn’t it odd how one mystery can lead to another, entirely different, one? Such was the case with a puzzling single piece of Cybis that surfaced some months ago. It was among a private collection being liquidated by the family of an enthusiastic collector who also knew the studio owners personally from the 1950s onward. [...]
Because my original 1950s-madonnas post has become so extensive, I decided to spin off the busts and torso (non-full-figure) pieces into this separate post. The same comments apply for these as for the full figures, including that: almost all of the 1950s religious pieces were cast by Cybis from molds that they purchased from companies [...]
When researching Cybis porcelain it is rarely possible to point to two different sculptures and definitively state “This became that” in its entirety (body-snatching doesn’t really qualify, although numerous instances of that practice have been found.) This is especially true when it comes to the earliest (1940s) pieces, many of which were either one of [...]
Among the pieces that George Ivers created or painted while he was the Art Director of the Cybis studio are four tales from the Old Testament. Unlike the 1971-72 Limnettes – which were retail pieces – these do not appear in any of the Cybis general retail price lists that I have found. However, I’m [...]
No, I’m really not pairing the chorus of Eminem’s The Real Slim Shady with a Cybis sculpture... even though there certainly were sufficient iterations to warrant it! Although the studio was never shy about borrowing pieces from one sculpture to help create another (see Body Snatching), this particular madonna bust not only kept popping up [...]
Collectors of circa-1950s Cybis porcelains know that the pieces produced during that decade differ from those produced in 1960 and beyond in two respects: Almost none were original Cybis designs (see this post), and many of them had a glazed finish. (Later pieces were all originals and were never glazed.) But there’s also a sub-group [...]
Although we know that Cybis used molds bought from other companies to produce almost all of their 1950s retail line, their local competitor Boehm seemed to have eschewed this practice – or so I thought until recently, when I found a singing-angel figurine made by both studios during that decade. And they weren’t alone: at [...]
The majority of representations of Jesus produced by the Cybis studio date from the 1950s and, as far as we know, those were all cast from molds they purchased from commercial mold companies such as Holland, Atlantic, and others. The Jesus sculptures fall into four categories: busts, full figures, crucifixes, and wall mounted items such [...]
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