Since today is the last day of National Library Week I wanted to share immersive art experience that our company has begun hosting at libraries in the Bay Area. Most people in the think of us only as a place to buy mannequins. But for…
These beautiful hand painted art mannequins were done by California based artist Nina Luna.
This is excellent article about the history of mannequins is a repost from the publication, Hopes and Fears. It was written by Leighann Morris and the illustrations are by Rachel Nosco.
The history of mannequins is as much a history of fashion as an overview of the 20th century. Over the past hundred years, figures change to reflect the advents of window shopping, subversive androgyny, women’s liberation, wartime rationing, Barbie doll fetishism, fiberglass, and Twiggy, to name a few. Art deco and Salvador Dali cross the storefront’s path.
Shapes rotate from poles to hourglasses and back. Nipples are a subject of debate! There’s even legend of a mannequin celebrity. Up to the present, mannequins reflect changing attitudes towards the female form, patterns in consumer behaviour, and developments in materials and technology, acting as epitomes for each era.
1900-1910
The evolution of the mannequin from a headless doll to a figure modelled on the complete human form is synonymous with the industrial revolution, a period in which the readily available manufacture of large plate-glass, sewing machines, and electricity transformed the shop-front into a performative space. This period marks the beginnings of “window shopping” as a bourgeois activity, and mannequins modelling the latest fashions take centre stage.
The 300 pound industrial woman
— MATERIALS: false teeth, glass eyes and real hair (there’s an air of taxidermy about them) feet of iron, legs and arms of dense wood, torsos and heads of solid wax. Mannequins break easily, are hard to clean, and melt under lights.
— TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY MANNEQUINS are clumsy and heavy, weighing 300 pounds. Mannequins also include realism; it isn’t only the period’s ideal body shape that was represented (Pierre Iman made mannequins that were up to a size 18).
As one of the leading vendors of used mannequins, we get at lot inquires from people who need help identifying the manufacturer of their vintage mannequin. Typically they are seeking information to determine how much money they can make it they decide to sell the mannequin…