🔎 UNIDENTIFIED Who is it

[Moriarty]

I purchased this about fifteen years ago, in an antique store near Wilmington DE.

It's an elegant cast statue, presumably aluminum and it's style suggests Art Nouveau to me but I'm just a layman with this stuff.

As you can see the base has some kind of signature and states PARIS as the location where it was made.

I cannot really read the signature, it's stylized and that first letter is a complete mystery, I assume it's a "T" but who knows...

The height of the piece is just shy of 26"

I'm curious to see if anyone has ever seen anything similar.

 

[Moriarty]

Oh and my apologies, this is also on the base but I overlooked it, it seems to explain the signature as possibly Tairo

 

[Moriarty]

Oh and look

Tairo Paris, cast metal statue, 19th century

Statue made of cast metal from the 1800s. It represents a girl.

www.intondo.com

 

[Digger54]

To muddy the waters Tairo is also a musician, but I found this snippet for you to research... "The Tairo Paris mark is frequently associated with foundry produced decorative bronze statuary from the late 19th and early 20th century in France, relegating the popular taste for elegant, often idealized".

 

[Red-Coat]

Nice. I ‘d give that house-room.

‘Tairo’ is neither a sculptor, nor a foundry. It’s a pseudonym used by collective atelier workshops in Paris during the art nouveau period between about 1890-1910. Despite being mass-produced as decorative art for the European and American markets, they’re quite collectable.

Produced as figurines, some of which were also lamps, they were cast in a zinc alloy called ‘calamine’ (also known as spelter, or régule in French), and then treated with metallic patinas to imitate bronze. Yours appear to have been given a coat of white paint in more recent times.

Although, as I said, some were made as lamps, I suspect yours has been heavily modified at a later time to serve that purpose. The subject is one of the more well-known figurines of a neo-classical lady (not of anyone in particular) playing with butterflies known by the title ‘Papillons’ (the wording on the base “Papillons par Tairo” means “Butterfles by Tairo”).

Originally, it would have looked like this, with a metal cord attaching a butterfly to it:

That one, which has a marble base as a later addition sold for £215 ($285) at auction two years ago. The paint and the subsequent electrical modifications will of course have significantly detracted from the value of yours.

 

[Terry Soloman]

Nice. I ‘d give that house-room.

‘Tairo’ is neither a sculptor, nor a foundry. It’s a pseudonym used by collective atelier workshops in Paris during the art nouveau period between about 1890-1910. Despite being mass-produced as decorative art for the European and American markets, they’re quite collectable.

Produced as figurines, some of which were also lamps, they were cast in a zinc alloy called ‘calamine’ (also known as spelter, or régule in French), and then treated with metallic patinas to imitate bronze. Yours appear to have been given a coat of white paint in more recent times.

Although, as I said, some were made as lamps, I suspect yours has been heavily modified at a later time to serve that purpose. The subject is one of the more well-known figurines of a neo-classical lady (not of anyone in particular) playing with butterflies known by the title ‘Papillons’ (the wording on the base “Papillons par Tairo” means “Butterfles by Tairo”).

Originally, it would have looked like this, with a metal cord attaching a butterfly to it:

View attachment 2261165

That one, which has a marble base as a later addition sold for £215 ($285) at auction two years ago. The paint and the subsequent electrical modifications will of course have significantly detracted from the value of yours.