Mass-Produced Cats

Since the 17th century in Europe, and before that in Asia, ladies' fans have been variously decorated to make them more appealing to the user.

Animals were always a popular choice of adornment, and the cat featured frequently in the early 1900s in the work of the great French fan-making firm Duvelleroy, among others, on cotton, silk, or paper fans.

It is likely that figurines in the shape of a cat were manufactured specifically with the collector in mind, perhaps as a direct result of the popularity of the cat fans.

During the 18th century, many manufacturers made cat figurines. From that era only the mass-produced ones are still available, although there are plenty of cat figurines being produced today for the collector. However, a cat figurine may be pleasing to the eye, but it is uninspiring as a plaything.

Luckily, Steiff, the German soft-toy maker, renowned for developing the Teddy Bear, rectified this with a line of black cats, which ran until the 1980s. The early ones, especially  those that still display the company name with a button on the ear, are sought after today.

The toy world went on to exploit the adulation surrounding cats with other items that now fetch high prices, including Victorian metal cats that nod their heads, key-wound plush cats from Europe, Japan, and China, and early American cat-based board games.

Cat postcards are the ideal starting point for any novice collector. Most countries joined the international postal system in the late 1800s, and postcards became fashionable as a: method for sending short communications.

During this time, manufacturers produced a seemingly infinite variety of cat postcards, many of which included the caricature cats of German artist Arthur Thiele (1841-1919) and the delicate illustrations of Helena Maguire (1860-1909). Yet it is probably the anthropomorphic subjects of Louis Wain that are well known to collectors and noncollectors alike.

This trend in the early postcards, to depict clothed cats participating in human events, was replaced later by black-and-white pictures of real, clothed cats. Often their eye were artificially colored, sometimes with tinted glass, to emphasize this very appealing  attribute.

In the 1930s, the fashion was for cat breeds, which were replaced during the 1950s by brightly colored photographs of kittens, often held in the arms of young girls.