$8,250
Sold
sold
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Description
11" (28 cm.) Each has bisque socket head with
sculpted cap or helmet over sculpted hair,glass
inset googly eyes,painted brows and
lashes,button-shaped mouth,closed mouth with
beaming smile,composition and wooden ball-jointed
body and is wearing antique-style costume or
uniform to enhance their depiction. Condition:
generally excellent,bodies are
appropriately-styled but are not original.
Comments: Max Handwerck,circa 1916,from a curious
and rare series that combined the popular googly
phenomena of the era,with the WWI historical
events; his googly model was issued with a variety
of different bisque hats or helmets to indicate
the involved nations,in this case,the United
States as Uncle Sam (marked Dep Elite U.S. 1) with
sculpted stars and stripe hat and having brown
hair; Germany (marked Dep Elite D. 1) with
sculpted green eagle helmet with sculpted light
brown hair; Japan (marked Dep Elite J 2/0) with
sculpted cap and black hair; and Turkish (marked
Dep Elite O.T. 2/0) with curious double face (one
with red cap and black hair indicating Eastern
allegiance,and one with green brimmed cap and
brown hair indicating Western alliance). The
series was likely never marketed in 1916 as the
combination of happy googly designs with war
figures was really a poor marketing decision,and
not until the 1950s was a warehouse stock of the
heads located in Germany,never having been
assembled with bodies,nor distributed at the time
of production. Evidently,too,very few of the heads
were ever made because they are very rare. Value
Points: rare googly models,virtually never found
as an assembled set,including rare double-faced
Turkish model.