Conta & Boehme Seated Girl with Lute Figure

Offered for sale is a late 19th Century "Fairing" figure produced by Conta & Boehme modelled as a seated rosy cheeked young girl playing a lute. Fairing refers to a small porcelain ornament depicting a variety of scenes, humorous, political or domestic. The ornament almost always incorporates a base and many fairings have a caption describing the scene or making some point inscribed on that base. China fairings are so named because they were given away as prizes at fairs in the Victorian era, although some were manufactured simply for sale. They first started appearing in the middle of the nineteenth century and remained popular until the start of the First World War.