Produced from 1904
No product number
Hand lacquered
Mechanism: Clockwork
Height approx. 20 cm / 7,9 inches
You can clearly see in the images that Martin used the barber number 196 from 1904 to design this toy. Whether this is a unique one-off piece or whether there was a production run is unknown.
This is one of the rarest Martin toys.
Martin has made several other very rare and unnumbered figurines.
In the photo below from the 1904 St. Louis exhibition, he standing on the right near the red arrows.
Les jouets à la World’s fair en 1904 à Saint-Louis (Smitsonian Labraries-no copyright)
After work the barber went out to play his typical French game of “Jeux de Boules”
Hello Cor, I had an email exchange with Lourens Bas about this toy back in 2018.
Like yourself, we both had more questions than answers. It is clear, as you point out ,that this toy is a variation of ‘L’Artiste Capillaire’ which was introduced in 1904, the year the picture above was taken at the Saint-Louis World fair. One thing that struck us was that this toy seems to have two left hands, although this is not very clear in the photos. If indeed it does, it would support the theory that it was made (in a hurry?) for the fair and never put into production. l’Artiste Capillaire’ holds the lotion bottle in the left hand which is cupped and thus could hold a ‘boule’ whereas the right hand is flat and couldn’t. Just a theory that the collector could perhaps help elucidate. Regards. Robert S.
Hello Robert,
thank you for your message.
I’m sorry my reply took a little longer.
I verified it with the owner, he has one right and one left hand, which is also visible in one of the photos.
I agree with you that it’s probably one of a kind.
The 1904 photo shows more figures that differ from the originals;
I think some are slightly bent, such as the seating position in the carousel.
Best regards, Cor