Klöppelfrau - Werkstatt Leichsenring

http://www.werkstatt-leichsenring.de/home.htm

This is going to be a little hard to believe. The top two photos are the modern Klöppelfrau, which you can buy today from Dregeno Seiffen at xxx. It has a square base, and a more mat paint surface than the older ones.

The next two photos are an older version of the figure, which I bought on Ebay, and photographed as soon as it arrived. One day, I glanced at this figure, which I had sitting on a table for some time, and noticed that it was surrounded by radial pattern of some flaky dust and small particles on the table. It appears that the paint was flaking off in a rather violent manner, almost explosively. All of the bobbins had also fallen off. I managed to stop it by wrapping the figure in plastic. You can see the result in the last photo. I don't know why this is happening, but it occurred over a few days. We have a very dry climate here; the wood may have shrunk and put stress on the paint. Or there might be some reaction of the paint with something in the air. The whole thing is a bit unnerving.

first posted 3/28/2009