Just Added: A pair of Will George figurines, Gort, Kreiss, and a stately pair from Goldcrest.

Read my occasional figurine blog Musings.

Contents and photos: Copyright © 2000-2015 Mark Wade Lieu. Last updated August 13, 2015.

I was born in 1960, so there was little of the orientalia movement left when I was growing up. Being Chinese, my parents never thought to have this type of decorative item in the house. However, during the 40s and 50s, oriental elements were a signficant aspect of interior design. These elements were stylized, and that is what gives them a lot of their kitsch value and quirky charm today.

A while back, I stumbled upon a book from 1988 called Fifties Homestyle, written by two fifties afficionados in Philadephia. There are pictures of several of the figurines that can also be found in my collection, and the authors, Mark Burns and Louis DiBonis, make some interesting observations about the prevelance of such figurines in the fifties. They write, "Chinamen and Mexicans were represented as childlike, innocent, fun loving -- and lazy. White folk were the serious adults, brown and yellow people were engaging, the Korean War notwithstanding. These objects were born out of ignorance, reinforced by TV and the developing tourist trade and its propaganda." (p 20) A little further, they add, "Depiction of other races -- generally with contented, nubile or exotic, but not threatening overtones -- was a common feature of the ornament." (p 42)

How did I, a San Francisco Chinese-American native, get caught up in collecting figurines of Chinese people from the 40s and 50s (and, it turns out, a few from the 60s as well)? It all began with a fateful visit to a friend in Wisconsin. We spent nearly every day driving around the countryside, stopping at antique shops along the way. Curiously, I found little figurines of Chinese people everywhere we went, but hardly any real Chinese people in the area at all. Being Chinese myself, I found this very peculiar. Then eBay opened the window to the amazing variety of such figurines, and the floodgates of my collecting mania were unleashed.

Now that I am past my fifteenth year of collecting, I have almost 1,000 pieces in my collection. We have long since run out of space to display them all. The only place to see all of my collection is this web site. The site navigation is pretty self-explanatory. The figurines are divided into sections by region of manufacture. California and Japan are the major sources, but orientalia hit all over the world. I also have links from the individual figurine pages to reference books where I have gotten my value estimates.

If you have any questions about my collection, feel free to email me at mwlieu@gmail.com. I hope you find my collection interesting although I still have yet to find someone who enjoys my figurines as much as I do.