Vintage Lladro Waiting in the Park Figurine 1374 – Retired, Francisco Catala, Picture Hat & Parasol, Handmade Porcelain Spain 1980s

A young woman in a wide flowered hat sits on a white bench, a closed parasol resting against her skirt, waiting for someone the sculptor never names. This is Lladró model 1374, Waiting in the Park, modelled by Francisco Catalá. At about ten and a half inches it is a large piece; most Lladró girls stand six or seven.

The soft pinks and blue-greys are fused into the glaze in a single high-temperature firing, so they pass into one another with no hard edge anywhere — the part of the process hardest to imitate. The cluster of flowers on the hat brim was built up petal by separate petal and applied by hand before firing. The bench is pierced porcelain, its back cut through into hearts and scrolls, difficult to carry through a kiln intact. Under the long skirt, as always with this factory, one small pointed slipper shows. Size is why so few survive whole: the parasol tip, the hat flowers, the pierced back and the fingertips are what go first.

The base carries the blue printed bellflower with Lladró, Hand Made in Spain, together with impressed workshop codes. That printed form of the mark came in during the later seventies, and the model itself ran from 1978 until the factory retired it in 1993 — which together place this example in the eighties.

Lladró built its name on scenes like this one. The picture hat, the parasol and the park bench belong to the belle époque, when a parasol was as much a declaration as a sunshade: pale skin meant a life spent out of the fields. Catalá is one of the factory's named sculptors, which collectors weigh, and a retired model only ever grows scarcer.