The Curious Case of Zaphir Clones of Models in the Regular
Lladró Collection
It is known that some of the Zaphir models can be found
with later NAO marks because, when Lladró closed the Zaphir brand around
1982 or so, any Zaphir models then in production were brought over into
the NAO brand. (Many of these were, in fairly short order, also retired from NAO
production as well.) I do not consider these items "clones" in the sense
I have used that term to describe NAO
clones because, in the Zaphir to NAO evolution, we are talking about a
natural phase-out of one brand into another. In discussing "clones," then, I
am talking about a more episodic "twinning" phenomenon in which a few items
made in NAO or Zaphir have also been found with old, impressed core collection
marks.
For some time, veteran collectors have also been familiar
with the phenomenon of NAO-marked clones of older Lladró pieces, including
some of the core collection pieces catalogued as rare in company sources
(items usually numbered with a decimal point). Stranger still, a few
Zaphir-marked items of core collection pieces have also been found - again,
including at least two of the decimal-point numbered rarities.
What makes this especially odd in the Zaphir case is that there is no evidence that Zaphir is as old as either the NAO collection or
the regular Lladró collection. As far as I've been able to determine, Zaphir
was not on the scene much before the late 1970s, giving the other two collections
a good ten years or more of a head start on its production. How, then, Zaphir would have been
recycling older Lladró models is something of a puzzle.
I scanned this picture of Zaphir's "Elf" #601 from a 1978 Zaphir retail catalog.
Having seen this item in the
Zaphir catalog of this web site, a collector recently
contacted me to say that he has
a nearly identical item marked with an old, impressed Lladró mark. (Under
the circumstances described here, I'm not at all surprised!) The
only difference, he says, is that his Lladró-marked item has a
quiver of arrows tucked into that space between the figure's body and the branch
of the tree stump.
Once again, sculptor Fulgencio García appears to have been the
link in this mystery of models shared among the three brands. As is
the case with all the NAO clones of core collection items, García was the
core collection sculptor of record for all the Lladró models
that have been found with Zaphir marks (see table below). Thus, even though a 1978
catalog for Zaphir identifies Jose Puche (also a famous sculptor of the
core collection) as "the" sculptor for the Zaphir collection,
it now appears that at least a few of the Zaphir models were sculpted
by García.
Whenever I come across another of these odd connections, I find myself wishing I'd been a fly
on the wall to know how this all got started - and how it eventually sorted
itself out into three different brands!
LIST OF ZAPHIR ALSO FOUND WITH
IMPRESSED LLADRÓ MARKS
Zaphir Number
- #729, "Satyr" (#1) [with cymbals]
- #730, "Satyr" (#2) [with pan flute]
- #731, "Satyr Group"
- #732, "Athena" (later made as NAO #732)
- #733, "Aristotle"(later made as NAO #733)
|
Lladró Number
- #1006, "Pan with Cymbals"
- #1007, "Pan with Flute"
- #1008, "Satyr Group"
- #343.13, "Greek Shepherdess"
- #342.13, "Greek Shepherd"
|
Notes: Zaphir #731, Satyr Group, is listed in the Zaphir price list for 1981 and is
presumed to be the same model as Lladró #1008 based on the pattern established
by the individual satyr models.
It is also fascinating to know that the "Athena" and "Aristotle" models are the
only items known to have been made under all three brand marks, as these were
also made as NAO!
|