..... which is the way one happy and relieved figurine collector described it when she discovered she could still buy English made bone china collectors figurines.... Yvonne was pleased to hear what the collector had to say:-




"Thank you for your work. Within our 'interesting' art world these days it’s not often that one sees an art form so beautiful and pure....".

Yvonne is a 'bone china figurine painter' one of the key people in interpreting the beautiful fabric textures and colours of our designs by couture designers such as Basia Zarzycka.

It is artist like Yvonne who, near the end of the process, add to the sculptors vision of designers ideas.

"The sculptors make many tiny adjustments, working with life models, until the hands, face and poses fully capture the essence of the subject. It eventually comes to my turn to do my bit to capture the essence of the original design"

When all development is done and everyone is completely happy with the look of the figurine, the finished sculpture is eventually passed to the painters and artist who start the process of magically changing a clay original to be enhanced by their colours and glazes during the firing and manufacture.

Yvonne worked for the great china houses of Coalport and Wedgwood learning and refining her craft and now has her own artist studio within our production facility.

Only the artists with the steadiest hands are allowed to work on our figurines.

By the time all the various complex elements of collectors figurines have been completed to our satisfaction, the figure has passed through an estimated 40 pairs of hands (see our article here).

See more behind the scenes work of The Figurine Collective

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Here's what John Bromley, sculptor, says about the transformation of design to 3D and then to bone china....

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"It isn't just me - I merely start the process. Each artist works on every fig as if it were their first and therefore the final product - collectors figurines - are rightly treasured by every collector who owns one.

Within the artists and artisans of Stoke-on-Trent Staffordshire there resides still a tradition of quality first crystallized by the original founders of the fine china tradition.

In the 1700's, men like John Rose of Coalport, Josiah Spode the 2nd and Master Potter John Aynsley were vying with their rival makers down in Worcester and London to combine utmost quality with economy of manufacture.




"FIND OUT HOW TO RESERVE A FIGURINE WITH NO OBLIGATION TO BUY!"


To succeed was, for these entrepreneurs, to see their names in lights for generations to come.

To fail was to go the way of Rockingham or any one of the hundreds of makers who were unable to find the correct balance.

All that lead to one absolute necessity - that of having to employ the best and most talented hands available. Father trained son and mother's their daughters, and so it went on.

We, at The Figurine Collective are just simply going about the business of carrying on the over 200 year old tradition that we have inherited to make high quality figurine collectables here in England."

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"The Hands Who Have The Special Touch"

Now, what is fascinating about the fine bone china Stoke-on-Trent tradition is the quality so demanded by the founding fathers, still runs through the skilled artisans of today like a gold seam through metamorphic rock.

What results is a fascinating oral tradition which informs the making of collectors figurines, two and a half centuries later, you only have to go to a Staffordshire bone china pot bank to still perceive.

We, The Figurine Collective, aim to keep the high quality tradition alive.

Preserving this important English heritage is exactly what The Figurine Collective is all about - but we are not a charity, we stand or fall by our ability to generate profitable sales. Such has always been the way of Staffordshire and always will be.

Leading ceramic artists John Bromley and Peter Holland are making a strong play, in 2009, for all these English skills to survive, because, make no mistake about it - Fine Bone China is a very English invention and our collectors' figurines have to be different from any other.

"FIND OUT HOW TO RESERVE A FIGURINE WITH NO OBLIGATION TO BUY!"

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Copyright 2009 The UK Figurine Collective Ltd

Telephone (UK) 01 386 832 120

SBI!