Hunting (Dogs and Deer)

Country: Spain

Manufactory: Lladro

Date of establishment: 1970

Sculptor: Fulgencio Garcia

Height (cm): 27

Porcelain Story

Let me tell you, my friends, a story associated with this, in my opinion, quite remarkable porcelain composition presented in our traditional column "figurine of the day''. I admit that this piece may seem a bit simple and unpretentious to some people, without complicated small details and a complicated multi-figure plot. Though if you look at it attentively the plot is interesting, there are not too few expressive figures, and the subtle details are present - dogs' tails, for example, and so naturally protruding out of the dogs' mouths... But the story is about something else.

On the American Internet auction, this rare piece has lasted only a few days. Then I was lucky enough to buy it. But after finding out that the buyer was from Ukraine, the owners of the lot suddenly had second thoughts about selling it. Or rather, to send it to Kiev. If you want, they wrote, you can come to America, and we will give it to you from hand to hand.

Of course, nobody would fly to America for this piece. But as it turned out, my children and I had a tourist trip for 5 days to New York. To cut a long story short, we arranged to meet in the lobby of the hotel where we had a room booked...

The excursions to New York museums had exhausted us for these few days finally. While waiting in the hotel lobby for the seller to arrive with the piece we had already paid for, we hoped to finish what we had started in a few minutes. But it was not over so fast!

When those grandparents, who were born in about the same period, carefully got out of a huge "cowboy" jeep-truck manufactured in the 1930-ties, we understood that it was going to be a difficult talk. And so it was, in fact,. They had travelled all the way across several states just to see in person the people to whom, at the end of their lives, we understood, the most beautiful and most precious thing that had decorated their humble farmhouse for many years would be handed over. They even questioned at length about where we would have this work so dear to their hearts. Maybe it was in some way related to the memory of someone close to them, already gone...

We never found out. Seeing the old folks off (convinced that their porcelain composition had really fallen into good hands), on their way back, we waved long after them, as if sensing the touching responsibility of keeping this work in our collection from now on, we shouldered...