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Moonlighting Lladró Sculptor(s)?

When I first began to notice that a few of the very same early models in NAO had also been made in the regular Lladró-marked line, I also noted that nearly every one of these "cloned" models had Fulgencio García as its core collection sculptor of record. I was able to determine, at least to my own satisfaction and based on known production chronologies in the regular collection and the relative age of marks, that, in cases involving this "twinning," the NAO version was sometimes, at least, the older of the two.

García was known to be one of the very earliest of the Lladró sculptors; some of the decimal-point models attributed to him in Lladró sources date from the early- to mid-1950s. This was long before the Lladró brothers would have been in any position to hire a stable of their own sculptors. So my thinking has always been that García must also have been working elsewhere when he was doing his earliest core collection work.

It's also possible that García was never really "in" the Lladró stable in the sense of being a salaried employee; perhaps he and other early scultpors were always free agents, as I have no way of knowing what the nature was of their work arrangements with Lladró. In either case, recent evidence suggests that as late as the early 1980s, García was freelancing for at least one other company besides Lladró - and, surprisingly, that the company was based in the U.S. It is almost equally clear that he wasn't keen to have people make the connection between his work for the American company and his role at Lladró.

The items in question were called "Cecilia the Carnation Maiden" and "Patricia of the Primroses," produced in 1983 by Franklin Porcelain of Franklin, Pennsylvania (perhaps affiliated with the Franklin Mint). There may also have been other items in the series based on this "girl of the flowers" theme.

Right, "Patricia of the Primroses," made by Fulgencio García for Franklin Porcelain in Pennsylvania, an apparent subsidiary of the Franklin Mint in 1983 but perhaps no longer in operation. The style is vaguely "Valencian" but doesn't much look like Fulgencio García's.

At first, I was inclined to dismiss the notion that this was Lladró's García because I just couldn't fathom that the then already aging sculptor would have gone this far afield of his home geography. Besides, I didn't think either the style - or, frankly, the quality of the Franklin models - was consistent with his work as I knew it in Lladró. But I was finally convinced by a preponderence of evidence presented to me by other collectors that the "Fulgencio" whose first name is inscribed on the Franklin pieces as their sculptor was in fact Lladró's Fulgencio García. My inquiries to the Franklin Mint as to the identity of the sculptor went unresponded to - despite my enclosure of a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

It became plain to me, from the ambiguous artist attribution for this item as well as its style, which is not really what one usually associates with García's, that some considerable lengths had been gone to to protect the sculptor's identity - such as might be the case had García been moonlighting and not necessarily have wanted that fact to get back to Lladró's "Porcelain City" - or such as might have been the case in a reverse scenario where Lladró gave him leave to develop models elsewhere as long as they weren't traceable to him (and through him to Lladró).



Left, "Cecilia the Carnation Maiden," designed for Franklin Porcelain by Fulgencio García, one of Lladró's most esteemed older artists. One can't help asking why, as the style and execution can hardly be said to represent a step up in the sculptor's artistic development. Perhaps this arrangement with Franklin was simply a way to make some extra money, much as a literary artist will sometimes try to make a living by supplementing his serious work with more saleable genre novels such as Westerns or Romances.

There are any number of questions I'd have loved to have asked my favorite Lladró sculptor, Fulgencio García, about his work had I been a journalist interviewing him - or had I been at least a fly on the wall. Alas, that window has closed forever: Fulgencio García died in 1994 at the age of 79.