The Hindu Business Line : Fine figurines

Lladro. Its finely sculpted porcelain figurines from the Spanish city of Valencia have long defined upper crust sensibilities. The Lladro signature stores, currently at Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore, will soon embrace Hyderabad and New Delhi. Exploring the spirit of the Indian collector, the brand introduced its Spirit of India range in 1999, with a limited edition Ganesha. Its 2,000 copies sold out within two years. Originally priced at Rs 70,000, today the secondary market for the same figurine would be over Rs 10 lakh.

Within this framework, it made sense to recently launch a Veena Ganesha figurine at Bangalore's Mahua Gallery within the swank Leela Palace hotel. The delicate porcelain piece from a limited edition of 2,000, priced at Rs 47,000, was displayed amidst paintings of Ganesha. The art was by senior Bengal school exponent Ramananda Bandopadhyay, Amit Bhar, Subramaniam G. and Raghava K.K., Suchibrata Deb and Debabrata Saha.

When asked why the launch did not happen at its three-year-old signature store at Prestige Meridien, Lladro store director Avinash Noel explains: "We wanted to enhance the image of Lladro. And to showcase it as an art form. A meeting with Mahua led to this exhibition."

Radha-Krishna creation.

Sadhana Jaipura, the brain behind Mahua, concurs, "This was basically an aesthetic collaboration. We came up with the idea of offsetting Lladro's iconic Ganesha and Radha-Krishna with paintings on similar themes."

Three other Ganeshas are slated to follow this special edition, each six months apart. The next one will be available at Diwali 2007.

Flaw-free workmanship

Started as a small artisan workshop in Valencia in 1953 by three brothers — Jos, Juan and Vicente Lladro — the company has grown by leaps and bounds. Today, its creations are conjured up in Porcelain City, a sprawling complex of artisan workshops, employing over 2,000 artists. Its manufacturing process is entirely manual. Finely modelled porcelain figures are hand-painted before being trusted to the kiln.

During the process, explains Noel, for every piece that comes out perfect in Valencia, about five to seven could be destroyed for flaws like chromatic variations. Given the degree of creative difficulty, it is mind-boggling that pieces like the exquisite, intricate Radha-Krishna, which retails for about Rs 2.47 lakh, ever make it to a limited edition of 3,000.

What does Lladro, both as tableware and figurines, stand for historically? Porcelain, one of the most closely guarded secrets in Chinese art, was first heard of in the West when Italian explorer Marco Polo returned home. Around 1692, Europe had yet to discover hard-paste porcelain. The pre-Lladro hallowed names in porcelain included the Ching-te Chen and Fukien province in China, Germany's Meissen, and Sevres from France. Today, Meissen, Sevres, Vienna and St Petersburg porcelain are displayed in major museums like the Louvre, the Prado, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Lladro vies with them for connoisseurship.

Lladro's `Spirit of India' collection offers a reason why. Be it their delicate-hued Radha-Krishna, each drape and accessory finely moulded. Or a Bharatanatyam dancer at Rs 44, 575. Or two `Hindu' children riding on an elephant. But of course, when the Indian collection was launched, Lladro trod carefully — with generic yoga mudra figures at a mere Rs 20,325.

Lladro figurines today, in constant evolution since the first tiny porcelain flowers that the brothers made in the Moorish-style brick kiln in their parents' backyard, have long expressed both beauty and exclusiveness. No wonder they have been presented to Presidents and Popes alike.

While Lladro represents fine craftsmanship within the context of an industrialised society, what can it offer to a culture like India where craft permeates homes across the social spectrum? Perhaps an exclusive corporate gift, with a lifetime assurance programme. If the selected sculpture is broken, the customer can purchase another at 33 per cent off the current retail price. If the piece has been sold out or retired, the same discount applies to another piece at a similar or lower price. Now, that's an offer no one in the Indian crafts sector can match!

To the discerning eye, Lladro continues to mean Euro-centric figurines, even today. Such as its `Mediterranean Beauty' series featuring Greek damsels, or `An Enchanted Forest,' the tableaux of elves, fairies and unicorns that preceded it.

Indian attraction

No matter what the theme, Lladro seems to have caught the Indian fancy. That's judging by its exponential growth in Bangalore, for instance, spiralling from 60 sculptures in the store's first year to 280 within the third.

Farahdeen Khan, a Bangalore-based poet, painter and entrepreneur, collects Lladro. Why?

"My parents used to collect Wedgewood, Royal Doulton and Armani pieces," he recalls. "I find Lladro fascinating as fine art. My first piece was a Gres series figure. I'm fascinated by the detailing that goes into each piece, and the little video that shows how each petal is fixed by hand. Or how their palette has grown over the years."

In a telecon, Farahdeen adds, "I've been collecting Lladro for over a decade. I picked up a Hummingbird from their 2005 Privilege Gold edition of 1,000. I admire the way they've evolved from classic figures to more minimal modern forms today."

Now, if that isn't a genuine customer statement, what is? And evidence enough that Indian collectors already consider Lladro sculptures as fine art. And, therefore, collectible objects of desire.