Passed
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Description
29" (74 cm.) Standing upon a red velvet-covered platform is a handsome man representing a Mexican troubadour or mariachi performer, with rich brown-complexioned leather-covered paper-mache head, brown glass eyes, articulated leather eyelids, painted features, open mouth with painted double row of teeth, black fleecy hair, carton torso and legs, and paper-mache hands, wearing original silk fitted shirt and pants with rich metallic decoration and lace cuffs and bow, silk shawl, rose silk tie, and gilt metallic fringed brown sombrero, and carrying a uniquely-shaped seven-string African-style double-necked mandolin. Condition: generally excellent, original facial painting, original costume (albeit with some frailty). Comments: Roullet & Decamps, circa 1890. When wound, he moves his head in a circular side-to-side motion as well as nodding, blinks his eyes, and strums the mandolin in a realistic manner while moving his lips as though crooning along to the music; two tunes play. The rare model appeared in the Roullet & Decamps catalog as model #190, and was surely designed to appeal to the fashionable international clientele traveling to the 1889 Paris International Exposition. It was offered in two sizes, this the larger luxury model. Value Points: among the rarest of the Vichy golden age luxury automaton, with superb detail of costuming, original complexion.