Line them up and the first thing you notice is that nobody agreed on a dress code. One is on her way to a masquerade, one has her hands buried in a fur muff against the cold, and one has stopped mid-turn to hold her skirt out and let you look at it. Seven Royal Doulton ladies have arrived at the shop, and every one of them was modelled in the middle of doing something.
Doulton has been making figures like these since 1913, when Queen Mary toured the firm’s works at Burslem in Staffordshire that April and stopped in front of a small child modelled in a nightshirt. Isn’t it darling, she said, and the name stuck. That piece went into the books as HN 1, and the series it opened has since run past 5,700 models. The HN prefix every collector still quotes belongs to Harry Nixon, who ran the figure-painting department and taught the first painters the job. Charles Noke had been quietly trialling the range since 1910.
The man most responsible for the ladies in particular was Leslie Harradine. He began modelling for the collection in 1920 and kept at it for close to forty years, and he never once took a desk at the factory. He worked freelance from a distance, posting a few finished models to Burslem every month and choosing for himself what he felt like sculpting. Peggy Davies returned to the firm in 1947 and carried the collection on until 1983.
What is on the table now spans a good stretch of that output. The lady in scarlet stands highest, her skirt sprigged with orange flowers and gathered in both hands. Beside her, a redhead in a close-fitting green jacket has her hands sunk into a tall fur muff that matches her hat. Below them: a slim figure in sage green with long blue gloves, a masquerader holding her mask up on a dark blue cloak, a girl in pink turning a small yellow rose over in her fingers, another in blue under a heavy gold shawl, and a crimson crinoline finished off with a wide blue hat and a lace fan.
They are worth seeing as a group, which is how they are sitting at the moment. Come and have a look at Pollyanna’s Antiques in downtown Mt. Clemens. We are open Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday from 10 to 4, and unlike the furniture, these will fit in the car.