Royal Doulton Balloon Seller Figurine Pair — ‘The Old Balloon Seller’ HN 1315 & ‘The Balloon Man’ HN 1954, Made in England

Royal Doulton's HN series is one of the longest-running and most beloved figurine lines in the history of English ceramics. The "HN" refers to Harry Nixon, the head of Doulton's figure-painting department when the numbering system was introduced in 1913, and the numbers have been assigned sequentially to every new figure design ever since — a kind of chronological fingerprint that lets collectors trace exactly when a given subject entered the catalog.

The Old Balloon Seller, HN 1315, was introduced in 1929 and designed by Leslie Harradine, one of Doulton's most prolific modellers. She became one of the most popular figures the company ever produced and remained in continuous production for decades, appearing on nearly every Doulton catalog through the middle of the twentieth century. The Balloon Man, HN 1954, followed in 1940 as a natural companion piece — again from Harradine — and the two were often sold, displayed, and collected together. Both subjects draw on a romantic, slightly sentimental vision of vanishing London street life: the old woman with her cluster of balloons, the old man with his hat and his coat, both working a trade that already belonged to an earlier century when the figures were first modelled.

Because these figures were in production for so long, exact dating of any given pair requires examination of the base marks, which evolved through the decades. The vivid glaze quality and crisp painting on this pair place them in the later twentieth-century production era — roughly the 1960s through the 1990s, when Doulton's colors were at their brightest and the figures were still made in England. The line has since been substantially reorganized and much of Royal Doulton's figure production moved overseas, which makes the earlier English-made examples increasingly sought after.