I first noticed a Malachite piece at an antiques fair down in the Cotswolds last summer. It was reasonably priced but I had a feeling there was something "wrong" with it. The dealer didn't know enough about it to convince me to buy it, which was probably a good thing. Then I started noticing similar pieces appearing at other fairs and it became clear that these were likely to be repros, as this and the other thread has confirmed.
congrats i think you've solved your puzzle. Halama is a most likely source of pressed powder boxes with nude ladies. If FH is the signature it would suggest that it is a recent piece. Pre-war pieces would not be signed, neither would pieces from the communist era (>'90) when the factory was part of a large industrial conglomerate.
It is a pity that some people seem to be taking advantage factories like Halama and and misrepresenting their current production as antiques. This is not in Halama's interests, but as Ivo suggests, it looks as if they are making an effort to sign their current production to ensure that people are not misled.
This doesn't mean that everyone who is selling the reproductions is necessarily aware that they are repros. They may have bought them in good faith.
However, just as we know that down in Whitstable Bay it is very easy to add a signature to the base of an unsigned TK Maxx masterpiece, it is also not unknown for the unscrupulous to grind away the base of a signed piece to make it unattributable and therefore ostensibly more interesting! So if I were looking at one of these pieces I would be inclined to examine the base very carefully, particularly if there were no signature, to try to establish whether or not it had been signed when it left the factory!
Topic: Not everyones cup of tea! - Halama (Read 7132 times)
