requesting wisdom

[incandescens]

Ladies, fish, and gentlemen (I'm listening to Blue Oyster Cult), your assistance, please.

On Monday, while visiting York, I wandered into a crafts/antiques sale thing and picked up a couple of statuettes for seven pounds the pair. They're about ten inches high, and feel as if they're made of wood. (Too heavy to be plastic.)

I cannot find any identifying marks on them, except for an R.B. carved into each. I can't even identify the culture they come from.

I don't expect them to turn out to be lost masterpieces (apart from in my wildest dreams), and am quite prepared for them to turn out to be mass-produced or whatever, and will still keep them, but has anyone seen anything like them? Or can anyone identify the national costumes?

http://pics.livejournal.com/incandescens/pic/0005p0kx/g32 - front view
http://pics.livejournal.com/incandescens/pic/0005qby0/g32 - back view

Comments

[gentlyepigrams]

Hi, you don't know me, but I randomly ran across your post on friends of friends.

I lived in North Yorkshire in the early 1980s for a couple of years and my mother bought a lot of antiques while we were there. She has two statues that look very similar to yours on her mantel at home, so I suspect you're right that they're mass-produced. I believe the man and woman are supposed to be Chinese. I don't know anything more about them than that, and she lives 2 1/2 hours away, but I'll ask the next time I talk to her.

Best of luck finding out more, and I hope this small piece of information helps.

[incandescens]

Thank you very much! That's very kind of you.

[barbara-hambly.livejournal.com]

I'd guess Chinese also. They look like the kind of (mass-produced) quasi-art one found in Chinese import-shops in Los Angeles and San Francisco fifteen or twenty years ago. The ones I'm thinking of were made of a sort of heavy plastic, almost PVC or resin. But of course, it's hard to tell on a picture.

[incandescens]

Thank you very much!

I suspect you're right. Oh well, they're still pretty.

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

Hmm. The man I'd say definitely looks like he's meant to be Chinese, a generic Du Fu wandering old man type (although the hair and costume aren't very period-specific). The lady, though -- the headdress and hairstyle are unfamiliar, and there's something in her face and the sinuous quality of the lines that seem almost Southeast Asian, even though her costume and headdress don't look like they're from any Southeast Asian culture either. I'd say probably quasi-Chinese, meant to invoke a sense of the Far East.

Also, Zoro figurine! 8D

[incandescens]

Thank you!

(They are not to be snobbish. They are expected to get on with my One Piece figures, my Esoteric Buddhism figures, my Stikfas . . .)