This is another vintage ceramic piece I bought at California Pottery expert and artist Jack Chipman’s estate sale. I’m pretty sure this is some sort of string holder, although if it is, I’m a little baffled as to how it’s supposed to work. It’s ceramic and measures about 6″ in height. The boy looks like he’s holding a reel of string, or flying a kite, or both, but since it lays flat against the wall, there’d be no way to attach a real reel of string around the protruding brown piece at the top of his higher hand. It’s hollow and on the back are three separate holes, so theoretically you could thread string through them, but there isn’t enough room to actually store the reel of string. I’m hoping Allee or some akitschianado out there might be able to figure this one out for me.
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Allee Willis
I think the string might just be for added effect as a spring holder for sure would be more convex to accommodate a ball of string.
I love the expression on this guys face. That’s what it was always like for me flying a kite. Rarely did I ever get it to just soar along freely. At some point it would catch a gust of wind, get hit by a bird or something to get it spiraling out of control with me going into a panic attempting to stop it from intertwining with someone else’s kite. This was probably caused because I always constructed my own and probably left a few gaps here and there…
I love how bunched up his little legs are.
Nessa
Perhaps there was a string or chain that connected it with a kite-shaped piece of ceramic?
Allee Willis
That’s an excellent thought.
Douglas Wood
I bet you’re right.
k2dtw
This is so great… I have seen sports related ceramic figures like this popping out of and sitting on the outside edge of their frame. The frame would hold the cartoonish artwork, appearing to be in the distance. Maybe in this case the artwork would be a hill/field, blue sky and a little/small kite flying in the distance with the kite string attached to the little ceramic guy??… I’ve seen, baseball players, boxers, wrestlers being thrown out of the ring…the art would be the ring w/the other wrestler, the ref, the mic and maybe faces around the ring… All so great, and I’m so sorry, it’s killing me that I can’t remember the name of the artist or art/frame company that did them????..
Douglas Wood
Thanks, k2dtw. This makes perfect sense and now that you describe them I can remember seeing something like this in my hunts. (But, sorry, can’t help you as to what the name of the company was.)