I don’t know why I bought the metal figure of a black male with a cigar in his mouth, one hand in his pocket and the other on his hip. I’m not usually drawn to Black Americana. Standing there boldly at the head of the ashtray, though, this figure looked a little defiant there among the other items on the auction table.
The ashtray appeared to be vintage, and surprisingly, the image was not the usual caricature of a black male. As I drew closer, I saw that it looked more boy than man – a boy trying to be a man with a big cigar poking out of his mouth in a whimsical pose. The bottom of the ashtray showed that it had been made in Austria. The metal figure was small, a little less than four inches tall, and all needed cleaning. His head still bobbled and lifted out of the top.
The bobblehead reminded me not of the early 20th-century stereotypes of African Americans but of the big-boss back-room politician of the same era chomping on a cigar – not defiant but bullying and blustering.
Because I had not seen a bobblehead cigar-smoking black male before, I Googled to find out more about it. Several were for sale on the web, and most seemed to have been made in Austria and Japan. One site was selling a Japan bobblehead – and calling it rare – for $115. Its colors were still vivid, as if it had never bobbled. Another was selling a cast-iron one made in Austria for $70.
I also found some stereotypical Japan bobblehead banks, including an Aunt Jemima and black children; several from Germany, including black women with and without watermelons, and a three-man band, and even a 1960s black child with pink lips from Puerto Rico.
As I searched farther, I moved from bobbleheads – also called nodders – to cigar paraphernalia with black images. The Wilcox silver-plate company produced a cigar ashtray dating to the late 19th century. The image was a bit grotesque and painful – a black man’s head and torso sitting on top a cracked egg with his feet protruding out the front.
Digging deeper, I moved from nodders and cigars to an Austrian artist named Franz Xaver (or Xavier) Bergmann who produced bronzes of black figures. I could find no bobbleheads by him – his pieces were considered more classy – but I came across a Naples, FL, company called Vienna Bronze Gallery that sold his works. He produced several types of Vienna bronzes, including animals, Native Americans and Middle Eastern figures, but I was more interested in his Austrian-made Black Americana.
Vienna bronzes were as new to me as the name Bergmann. They were first made around 1850 in Vienna, Austria, and Bergmann’s father was the owner of one of the small factories that made them. The bronzes were also produced in artist studios in a process called the lost wax method in which the piece was cast in bronze from the artist’s original sculpture, and then hand-painted. Vienna bronzes are said to be known for their color and details. They were sold in New York, London and Paris.
The son took over the factory from his father and opened a new foundry at the turn of the 20th century. He kept many of the designs that had been created by his father. Bergmann marked his pieces with a jar and the letter B. He signed some of his erotic pieces Nam Greb (his last name spelled backwards).
Bergmann’s pieces for sale on the Vienna Bronze Gallery site included a jazz band, a black boy getting his head shaved and two males shooting pool.
I wondered if either of the Bergmann’s had ever visited the United States to form their vision of what black people looked like or got their cue from what others were making. I could find little else about either of them. But my guess is that they took the cue because the pieces I saw on the web were crude compared to his other non-Black Americana works.
