Antiques – Vintage Bathing Beauties…Yours for a Song

To understand why there are were many naughty, nude and bathing beauty figurines made in the 1920s and ‘30s, just think of two songs from that era.
The first song is “Anything Goes,” with the famous opening line, “In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, now, heaven knows, anything goes.”
The “olden days” Cole Porter was writing about was, of course, was the Victorian/Edwardian era (1837-ca. 1910), a nearly a century-long period renown for its harsh and hypocritical morality. In the 1920s, the floodgates of that repression burst open, and the party was so loud they called the decade “Roaring,” and there would be no looking back.
The second song is “How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree.” During World War I, thousands of American soldiers had confronted in Europe a very different moral tone than back home in Puritan/Irish Catholic USA. When sophisticated Johnny came marching home, he just might find the girl next door a bore.
Or he just might be surprised to find that girl got bored being the girl next door, and turned herself into a liberated, cigarette-smoking, Charleston-dancing, Jazz- Age flapper.
The flapper was the inspiration for most of the bathing beauty figures from the ‘20s and ‘30s that we find in the antique shops today. And while they may not seem at all risqué to us today, they were quite naughty in their day. If you have ever seen an old photo of what a Victorian bathing outfit looked like you understand just how scandalous the bathing beauty was.
Were there nude and naughty figurines during Victorian times? Sure. But after World War I, they would become more available, and affordable. Many of the same German porcelain companies – Schafer and Vater, Heubach Brothers – that produced them in the past would take advantage of the changing morality of the ‘20s.
If you find numbers impress in a figure, it was made in Germany. German bisque (unglazed porcelain) figures are particularly prized by today’s collector. German companies also made these figures in luster ware porcelain with a very shiny glaze that sometimes had an iridescent surface.
During the 1930s, as the popularity of the bathing beauty figures grew, Japanese companies mass-produced copies of the German figures, especially the luster ware. These will sometimes be marked “Japan” or “Made in Japan.” There is also and impressed mark, “Patent T.T.” on some, usually the nodders, figures with a moving part.
Appraisals: German porcelain bathing beauties from the late 19th Century through the 1920s are valued in the $150-$450 price range, depending on age, rarity and quality. Bathing beauty figures made in Japan in the 1930s are valued from $50 to $150.
Arthur Schwerdt, a certified appraiser, is the author of “The Antique Story Book: Finding the Real Value of Old Things,” and co-owner of The August Farmhouse Antiques on Route 9 in Swainton, Send your comments, questions and appraisal requests to aschwerdt@cmcherald.com.