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Ah, That Mysterious
NAO Brand!
-Peggy Whiteneck
The myth of origins of the NAO brand is a tale I've come
to think of as the "Adam's Rib" creation story: "In the beginning was
the core collection, and it begat everything else." According to this version,
NAO came into being
after the three founding brothers decided that it would be nice to
have a brand that would make fine porcelain
affordable for a broader public.
This breath-taking model of a NAO "Goose"(#52)
is over a foot tall! It has a companion piece (#53) in which the goose's neck is
bent to preen its breast. These were made in both glazed and matte (unglazed)
versions. Both models were recently retired (2001) at a last retail price
of $60 each. Identical models have been found with old impressed core
collection marks. Just to confuse matters, this
pair was also made in a somewhat smaller version called "Goose-Reduced"
(NAO #s 54 and 55), retired in 1991. I've recently been advised by
Lladró customer services in Spain that the sculptor for
these models was Fulgencio García, who was one of the most famous
of the Lladró sculptors. (Photo by the author from her
own collection.)
However, it has become clear to veteran
collectors over the years that the evolution of the NAO brand was contemporaneous
with the appearance of the core collection rather than grafted onto it later.
Which came first is a chicken-or-the-egg question, but it seems clear that the earliest relationship
between NAO-marked items and the earliest core collection models is quite a
bit more symbiotic than anyone had previously suspected.
In fact, according to a recent admission on the
official NAO porcelain web site, "NAO was founded
in 1968 under the name Rosal." Thanks to alert collector Robert E. (Gene)
Woods for calling this information to my attention. As it happens, Gene
purchased, in the UK, a
pheasant model, which he indicates is an exact twin of the
regular collection rarity #331.13. (For a picture of this pheasant and
more information on this "cloning" phenomenon,
see
Items Known to Have Been Produced Under Both Marks.)
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