Posted 7 years ago
sarahoff
(279 items)
I originally bid on her because of her art deco vibe, but after a bit of research I realized that she may be a more recent JB Hirsch lamp. Anyone have any information about this lovely lady?
JB Hirsch lamp? | ||
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Posted 7 years ago
sarahoff
(279 items)
I originally bid on her because of her art deco vibe, but after a bit of research I realized that she may be a more recent JB Hirsch lamp. Anyone have any information about this lovely lady?
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Gorgeous sara ! wow I love her , I think Phil might be able to help ID her .
The name of the piece is "Trop Risque" ("Too Risk"), she is made of Ivorine and Spelter, in 1928, after Godard
Rlwindle, do you think she's from the 1920s? The wheel switch kind of threw me off.
BB2 was here
Hirsch never dug up the molds until after the second world war and started to produce these. This one never made it into the book so it was produced after 1980 when Hirsch finally produced all the rest of the molds which were gathered until 1966 when they finally had all of the parts.
The wiring and switch as you can probably tell show that it was made in the 1980's, which is further proof of the age. I was rewiring a lot of old airplane ashtrays so I bought a lot of those identical switch parts. The date will show as 1928 as Hirsch often used the date the piece was first originally produced in France, before they dug up the original moulds. The writer Harold Berman used a lot of items of the Hirsch Foundry in his ency books on statues and when the son Stanley Hirsch was seeing some statues that he knew he had the moulds to them, at a fresh exhibition of statues, by the met museum in NYC - he was told by the museum to contact Mr. Harold Berman. They had a wonderful working relationship for several years. Possibly 5 years in fact. Berman put in a large section in his books on some of the statues that the Hirsch Foundry produced, including both statues and a lot of statue lamps. When I see a lot of pieces like yours I immediately reference the Berman Encyclopedia of Bronzes 1800 to 1930.
Berman never considered them as reproductions since they were produced from the original moulds, he called them "Exemplaires." There were a lot of lamps that the Hirsch foundry had made that they never went into full production because of the complexity. Unfortunately that is where the story ends as the company closed, possibly re-opened, and then shut down again, so I do not know what happened to all those moulds. Mr. Berman died in 1989. I got interested in these statues when I seen some Bookends the foundry made and in the old world of 1980 they were falsely attributed to Gerdago who never made some of the best designs in figures that were later correctly identified by the Hirsch foundry from signatures on the moulds. By the early 2000's I took it upon myself to try to set some of the records straight from what I learned from all my books on Bronzes, Statues, marbles and statue lamps. The encylopedia did not have all the answers so I was lucky to find other info, not seen before, by other authors.
No I do not believe she is from the 20's she is probably mid to late 30's. I have her without the light. Hirsch imported and bought European molds before WWI and after. The argument that Hirsch did not produce these items until after WWII does not hold water. I have Clocks manufactured by New Haven Clock Co. and Whitehall - Hammond that date from the late 20's and early 30's featuring Hirsch figures that make the post WWII argument moot. The post WWII story does not fit history.