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Vintage Chalkware Figurine — Glamour Lady in Red with Borzoi
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Vintage Chalkware Figurine — Glamour Lady in Red with Borzoi
Mid-Century (c. 1940s–1960s)
Mid-Century American Chalkware / Hollywood Glamour
The “glamour lady with sighthound” was one of the most popular compositions in mid-century American chalkware — hand-painted plaster figurines produced from the 1940s through the early 1960s. The Borzoi (Russian Wolfhound) was the quintessential glamour dog of the era, a fixture in fashion illustration and society portraiture. Paired with a woman in evening dress, the composition captured an aspirational Hollywood fantasy that resonated in American homes coast to coast. The piece is unmarked, as was typical of decorative chalkware of the period. Several companies produced similar compositions during this period.
The Borzoi’s glamour-dog reputation was not invented in plaster. The breed had been a fixture of the Russian imperial court — Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich’s Perchino kennel kept 130 adults at its peak — and crossed to the United States as early as 1903, when Joseph B. Thomas imported Perchino bloodlines to Valley Farm Kennel in Simsbury, Connecticut. By the 1920s and ’30s the breed had become a fixture of Hollywood glamour, and Louis Icart paired Borzois with evening-gowned women in his Art Deco etchings decades before the same motif appeared in painted plaster.
The silhouette — tiered gown, opera gloves, upswept waves — places this piece in the post-New Look window of roughly 1948 to 1955. It originates from a collection in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
Specifications
- Dimensions
- N/A
- Weight
- 2.0 lbs
- SKU
- HDRF-VR-0019
Details
- Hand-painted plaster/chalkware, mid-century
- Approximately 11" tall x 7" wide
- Seated woman in tiered red/coral gown with black trim, opera gloves, and Hollywood curls
- White Borzoi (Russian Wolfhound) at her side
- No maker's marks
