El Portal Porcelana

"For People Passionate About Spanish Porcelain"

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LLADRÓ
   Regular Collection
   NAO
      (NAO Catalog)
          (Retired 2004)
          (Retired 2005)
          (Retired 2006)
          (Retired 2007)
          (Retired 2008)
          (Retired 2009-10)
          (Retired 2011-12)
   Rosal
   Tang
     (More About Tang)
     ("Unmarked" Tang)
   Zaphir
   Golden Memories
      (GM-NAO Nexus)
       (GM Catalog)
   Hispania
     (Hispania Catalog)

Made in Spain
(No Brand Name)

Nadal

Other Companies
   Nalda

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For those interested in glass figurines, Fenton Art Glass Beasts, Birds & Butterflies is another of Peggy's books!



Also for those interested in glass, Fenton Art Glass Fairy Lamps & Lights is Peggy's latest book! It focuses on small, candle-lit "lamps" that were first used in the Victorian era to light dark hallways before the invention of gaslight or electricity.

The publisher for these Fenton books has gone out of business, but I am pursuing other publishing options for revised and expanded editions. Stay tuned! In the meantime, you may still find advance-ordered and used copies of these books at online booksellers.

At Last, A Mystery Solved!

- © Peggy Whiteneck

Those of you who have spent time browsing these Tang pages may have noticed the Tang sticker on Brenda McCrary's "child with tambourine" on the pevious page. Thereupon hung the resolution of a mystery, though I didn't know it at the time because I hadn't seen a photo of the base.

More recently, collector Jorge Luis Gonzalez emailed me to tell me excitedly he thought he'd found the answer to a long-standing mystery among Lladró collectors - and that is that we keep finding items marked "Made in Spain," usually in cobalt blue block caps, but with no maker's marks. The reason these items were so curious to collectors is that they look an awful lot like genuine Lladró - much more so than any of Lladró known imitators who consciously strive and mostly fail to emulate Lladró's distinctive style. We collectors were constantly wondering and conjecturing on what to make of these items.

What Jorge had discovered was a recent acquisition for his own collection that bore the same Tang sticker as on Brenda's item, but he supplied the missing piece of the puzzle: a photo of the base with the same block-letter cobalt blue "Made in Spain" mark that we had seen on other unmarked items. Subsequently, another collector told me that she has an item pictured in my "Made in Spain-No Mark" section of "El Portal Porcelana" but with the Tang sticker found on Jorge's dog.

This dog model is marked with a Tang sticker on the side - with that blue Made in Spain stamp on the base its only permanent mark! (Photos courtesy of Jorge Gonzalez.)

Well, one thing we know about stickers is that they usually fall off! Based on the evidence, it seems clear that most of the unmarked but country-attributed Spanish porcelain figurines are Tang from which the stickers have come loose and been lost. (A few of these Spain-marked items could be Rosal, which was also sometimes marked using stickers. Both Tang and Rosal were at some point marked more permanently with the brand backstamp or impressed marks shown on their respective pages of this web site.)

It should also be noted that the Made in Spain mark is simple enough to be copied on manifestly inferior products. It takes time and experience for consumers to evolve into collectors who are able to tell the difference between superior and inferior quality in product comparisons. So whether or not a given item marked "Made in Spain" is a Tang or Rosalor some inferior brand depends upon those quality judgments and the consumer's ability to make them.

At Last - A New Lladró Book!

The Lladró Guide; A Collector's Reference to Retired Porcelain Figurines in Lladró Brands

My most recent Lladró book has revised and expanded content and remains the only book in print on this topic that isn't just a catalog. Covers all Lladró and Lladró-affiliated brands (regular collection, NAO, Zaphir, Golden Memories, Hispania, Rosal, and Tang) and tells how to distinguish them from imitations and counterfeits. Revised and expanded content includes many new photos and a new chapter on future directions for collectors and the company now that it has passed from family hands. The book is in hard cover, which eliminates that annoying curl-up that happens with paperback books. You can order the book directly from the publisher, Schiffer Books, on Amazon, or from your favorite bookstore using the ISBN 13 number 978-0764358395.

Warning: If you're looking for a catalog of every retired figurine Lladró ever made, this is not the book for you. If you're looking for beautiful, full-color photos of representative models and more in-depth and well-researched information about Lladró and its history and production than you can get in thumbnail photos with captions, this book is what you're looking for.

Retail Price in Hardcover: $45


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The logo background and side border graphic on this site are provided courtesy of Absolute Background Textures Archive (www.grsites.com/textures). All other content and graphics on this site are © Peggy Whiteneck. No reproduction of any part of this content is permitted without the express permission of the web site author.