Description
This belonged to my grandmother, and my mother always referred to it as a "Hummel"; I assumed she had bought it on a European trip in the late '50s. I am not sure it is a Hummel at all, based on what little I actually know about Hummels. It is a hollow ceramic figure about 5" tall, and depicts a young boy in classic bellboy uniform, laden with suitcases. A dog sits at his right heel. "Little Bellboy" is written on the bottom, along with the artist's mark (I assume) AHIL. I am more curious about it than anything, however I am listing it for sale.
Update: thanks for the response below. I'll leave this up for a week or so, and will consider offers in the range noted.
Re: Hummel-like figurine
"little bellboy" was made by Napco. AHIL is actually AH1L.
National Potteries corporation started in 1939 in Cleveland, Ohio. Napco started as a manufacturer of floral containers but later concentrated on importing glassware, pottery, and ceramic items from Japan. Japanese ceramic imports peaked from 1956 to the early 1960s. I estimate that this is the time period that the figurines were produced.
Napco pieces may be called Hummel-type, Hummel copy-cats or Hummel-esque. $10.00-30.00.
Re: Hummel-like figurine
I am a huge fan of Dragonware and have been collecting it for years now. I do not, however, know very much about it or if I'm even getting testking 642-691 the actual antiques versus the copies that seem to be in production right now in China. I have a very large collection right now and I'm just wondering if anyone can tell me how to tell the copies from the antiques and whether or not there testking 352-001 is any extremely rare dragonware that I should be looking out for or might already have. "Fakes" to appear there generally has to be a great demand for the item for which prices have been driven up substantially. testking 70-433 As Dragonware is still very modestly priced and was produced in huge numbers, I doubt that there is any fake stuff out there. As for rare Dragonware, I've yet to see any that would be considered as such, nearly all of it was mass produced testking 642-971 and not particularly of good quality.