Two Studio Pottery Glazed Earthenware Busts of Pierrot Clowns c.1970-90

Origin: English
Period: Mid/Late 20thC
Provenance: Unknown
Date: c.1970-90
One: 10” w x 8.5” h x 6.5” d
Two: 10.5” w x 11” h x 8.5” d

The utterly charming two studio pottery glazed earthenware busts of Pierrot clowns, both glazed in a satin off-white glaze, one in a bobble hat with red painted lips and wide, frilled collar, the other with black skull cap and spotted collar, surviving from the third quarter of the twentieth century.

The busts are in good overall order and are apparently unsigned. They could be cleaned if so desired. There are no obvious losses, cracks or chips.

London entertainer Joseph Grimaldi was said to have invented the modern clown in the early 1800s. Grimaldi performed physical comedy while wearing white face paint with red patches on his cheeks and bizarre colorful costumes. Around the same time in France, everyone was laughing at Jean-Gaspard Deburau's Pierrot, a clown character with a white face, black eyebrows and red lips — one of the first professional silent mimes. French literary critic Edmond de Congourt said in 1876 that "the clown's art is now rather terrifying and full of anxiety and apprehension, their suicidal feats, their monstrous gesticulations and frenzied mimicry reminding one of the courtyard of a lunatic asylum.”

Love or hate clowns this pair of fools delight simply being stationary.