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Now Out of Print


Latest Book!

A Collector's Book
of Retired Lladró ;
Genuine Figurines & Their Marks

by Peggy Whiteneck

Click here to order!



Click on the image above for a link to the web site for The Glass and Pottery Review from Old Line Publishing! The inaugural issue has my feature article on Lladró.

"Tang" - Another Mystery Piece
to the Puzzle of Early Lladró

-Peggy Whiteneck

Some months ago, collector Larry Gochberg contacted me to ask about an item that looked like Lladró but was not marked. Upon sending a picture of it to the Lladró company, he'd received an email from a Lladró representative informing him that the bulldog figurine in question had been made by a company called Tang "that was purchased by the Lladró brothers at the beginning of the 60s together with another factory called Zaphir."

A small (5" long) bulldog model identified by a Lladró company staffer as having been a Tang model, a company later acquired by Lladró. (Photo courtesy of Larry Gochberg.)

Well, at first, I found the claim hard to believe. I've seen no evidence that the Zaphir brand dates earlier than 1978, and it was in production as a distinct company at least through the early 1980s, so Lladró's buy-out of Zaphir couldn't have been contemporaneneous with a 1960s acquisition of a brand called Tang. The Lladró source also told Mr. Gochberg that the bulldog model was still in production as a NAO, although that's clearly not the case. Besides, I considered "Tang" a pretty odd name for a porcelain produced in Spain; if you do an internet search on the name, what you'll get are thousands of references to ancient Tang Dynasty Chinese porcelain.

Then, just recently, collector Richard Voinnet of Paris, France contacted me via email to ask about an item that had been attached to a wooden base and that he'd bought on the secondary market because he'd been sure it was a Lladró. When he got the item home and removed the artificially attached base, he was disappointed to see the item had a mark that wasn't Lladró's. "Can you identify the mark from the picture I'm sending?" he asked.

Lo and behold, there was the elusive "Tang" mark! Moreover, it was attached to a model of an adolescent boy wearing a yarmulke and accompanied by his dog, an item I knew had been made as an early NAO (#32, "Man's Best Friend") and which dates from no later than the early 1970s and perhaps as early as the mid- to late-1960s (see NAO catalog listing for this item).

This Tang model was also made as NAO #32, "Man's Best Friend." Its early NAO catalog number dates that version from no later than the early 70s. According to a Lladró source, the Tang company was acquired by Lladró, so there is a demonstrable relationship between the two brands, though the precise nature of that relationship - and which company came first - remains obscure. (Photo courtesy of Richard Voinnet.)

Let's stop for a moment and ponder this: the NAO model of this was already being made this early. So if Lladró acquired Tang, the latter was already working - that early - in the style that Lladró popularized. How do we explain this? Well - and here I am engaging in my own conjecture, though it is logically consistent with what else we know about the migrations of Lladró sculptors between brands and companies - we already know that Fulgencio García, Juan Huerta, and Vicente Martinez (all early Lladró core collection sculptors) also worked on some of the earliest NAO models, so it's at least possible one or more of them worked on Tang as well.

A nice, clear image of the base of Richard Voinnet's figurine grouping, showing the well-impressed Tang mark. (Photo courtesy of Richard Voinnet.)

Lladró has always been scrupulously careful of its reputation and has never been known to claim relationships to other products unless such relationships actually existed. Thus, the fascinating information we can take from the Lladró staffer's response to Mr. Gochberg is that, the Asian name notwithstanding, it does, indeed, appear that there was a Spain-based porcelain figurine company named "Tang" and that it had some connection to the early history of NAO by Lladró, even if precisely what that connection was and how it evolved remain unclear.

More on Tang

Announcing
A Collector's Book of Retired Lladró

by Peggy Whiteneck
published by
Old Line Publishing, LLC
Hampstead, Maryland

Posted 7/18/10

Ever since its founding in the 1950s and its subsequent, stellar rise to global prominence, collectors have been fascinated with the singular modeling and attention to detail in Lladró Spanish porcelain figurines. Eventually, collectors discovered that Lladró wasn't just one brand, but several. At the same time, other companies began to sprout up all over Spain, particularly around Lladó's own region in Valencia, working "in the Lladró style" and hoping to catch a ride on the tailwinds of its popularity. This book is written to acquaint readers with retired figurines in all the Lladró and Lladró-affiliated brands and to help distinguish them from the work of other Spanish companies. The book features substantive chapters on the Lladró "core brand," NAO by Lladró, Zaphir, Golden Memories, Rosal, and Hispania, complete with representative photos for each brand.

Retail Price: $29.95
Special Pre-Order Price: $26.95
S & H: $5.95

Click Here to Order!


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