The porcelain angels and other figurines in the box at auction were actually quite cute. There were so many of them that someone was obviously giving up a collection – or the pieces were being discarded because the owner was no longer around.
Most of the angels bore a month of the year written in gold on their skirts, but there were other figurines without wings and halos that held something of importance in their hands. I flipped one over and saw the label “Lefton.” I was familiar with the brand; I’d seen it often on figurines like these. I thought of them as simple inexpensive pieces that folks no longer bought or wanted.
I learned that the ones with the name of a month were called birthday angels, presumably perfect for gifting. One site labeled them “Angel of the Month.”
The angels appeared to have been very popular during the 1990s, but so many flooded the market that their price and the enthusiasm for them dropped. The owner of the half-boxes of figurines at auction may have been among them. At one point, Lefton products were so sought-after that buyers could find them in 10,000 stores across the country.
Googling, I found lots of them selling on retail sites. On eBay, though, very few were sold – even at very low prices. Some of the Christmas angels, which one site said were more popular, were selling.
I recall coming across the Lefton name at auction on a spaghetti poodle – which I had never heard of before. At that same auction, the name showed up on some head vases. I wondered if any of the vases bore the faces of African American women. Since the pieces were made more than 50 years ago, I doubted it. And if they had been made, they would have been stereotypical.
The Lefton China company was founded in Chicago by George Zoltan Lefton, who began importing the porcelain figurines from Japan after World War II. The company also imported head vases, cookie jars, snack sets, jam jars, planters and more. On the web, I found a Lefton figurine featuring an angel subduing a devil.
The angels at auction were stamped “Lefton Trademark Exclusives Japan” with a red-and-gold paper seal, so they were likely made from 1946 to 1953. Starting in the 1970s, the company started importing the pieces from other countries, including China and Italy. Over the years, it imported both porcelain and ceramic pieces. Lefton China was sold in 2001.
Lefton’s competitors were Napco and Enesco, best known for its Precious Moments series.
Not all of the figurines at auction were marked Lefton. One figurine playing a violin was embossed Sankyo Japan and was actually a music box made by a company famous for them. Another wore a tag labeled Josef Originals, a California company that also began importing pieces after World War II.
