How many figurines are listed each year?

Around 110 come up a year on Sellingantiques, and 118 different dealers have handled them. That spread means this is a category almost every ceramics dealer touches at some point, rather than the preserve of a handful of specialists.

What period do most of them come from?

Dealer-entered dates run from 1700 to 1960. The commonest entry isn't a year at all but the vague '19th Century', on 207 listings, and only 374 of 788 carry a clean year. Decade tags cluster at the 1880s, 1860s, 1890s and 1930s. Period words like Victorian, Georgian, Regency and Edwardian get used as dates too, where a year isn't known.

Are Staffordshire dogs the same as flatbacks?

They overlap. Flatback describes the construction: modelled at the front, left plain at the back, made to sit against a wall. Staffordshire spaniels are the best-known example, usually as a facing pair of seated dogs. Poodles and greyhounds appear as well, alongside flatback portrait figures of royal and theatrical subjects.

Which subjects turn up at the top of the range?

Parrots and cockatoos are a recurring note right at the top, as singles and as pairs perched under lemon trees. Elephants appear there too. Sets do the same. A set of the Four Seasons, a Georgian pair complete with sconces, and a 24-piece set of Continental figurines are among the larger lots to pass through.

Why do so few listings name a maker?

Only one name clears three dealers across the whole archive, which tells you how rarely dealers agree on an attribution under this heading. When a factory is named, it may come as a stamped or impressed mark, a printed mark, or simply as 'attributed to'. A great many titles carry no maker at all, just the form and a period.

What are the oldest pieces sold under this heading?

A few are tagged 'Before 1700'. Among them an Egyptian faience shabti and a terracotta Astarte figure of around 2000-1700 BC, by a long way the oldest things to appear here. Other one-offs include a Ming glazed terracotta tomb companion, a Ca Mau shipwreck-cargo seated boy and a Staffordshire pearlware cottage money box.

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Antique Figurines

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Small free-standing ceramic sculpture, made as a table or mantel ornament: single figures and facing pairs of people and animals, in porcelain or moulded earthenware.