I've a vintage bovine mystery on my hands and I hope you can help me track down some identity information about these two figures.
The recent junking foray I've been telling you about in the last few posts ("picking", to my more refined colleagues) yielded these two unusual and attractive cow figurines. I obtained them at a small flea market venue where the fellow in charge sold them to me for a
modest $5.00 because they'd been sitting in his booth for quite a while. I didn't (and still really don't) have a clue about their origin or value, but they were so unusual and striking that I had to have them.
Poring over photos in Google Images and also eBay, I have found a paltry one or two items of vaguely similar type, but nothing that quite matches the style of these. I'm guessing these are modernist, Eames era figurines, but who designed/made them?
Now that you've seen a couple of similar pieces, let me show mine to you individually. First, mama cow.
Baby is a real cutie, and could probably pass for a myriad of other small creatures, not looking especially calf-like.
It almost looks like a fat baby bird.
Now, here's the important clue. Both of these pieces have a stamped mark. It looks something like a curvy letter "Z" with a vertical line through it, enclosed in a circle.
Much internet searching led me to Kovels.com where I found an exhaustive (exhausting!) index of porcelain and pottery trademarks. The trouble is, I couldn't find this one! And I plowed through every list that seemed remotely related.
I'm hoping someone out there can put me on the right track. The bottoms of both figures are covered with felt lining, and there is no other identifying mark.
Those are strange Ive never seen anything like them.
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