Vintage Precious Moments Cane You Join Us For A Merry Christmas – Girl with Candy Heart Wreath, Enesco Bisque Porcelain, Dated 1997

A small girl in a green flowered nightdress and a white pinafore, a pink bow tied at the crown of her blonde hair, holding up a heart made of two red-and-white candy canes with a green bow at the join. Across her pinafore, in pink, is the year: 1997.

She is bisque — fired but left unglazed — which is why the surface is chalk-soft rather than shiny, and why the colour sits in the porcelain instead of on top of it. The painting is the gentle, sprayed kind: a blush of pink on each cheek, the faintest wash of green through the dress, the stripes on the canes brushed on one at a time. The eyes are the giveaway of the line — those wide teardrop eyes, each with a single white dot of light, drawn the same way on every piece since Sam Butcher's first ones in the late seventies.

The base is marked © 1997 PMI · Lic. Enesco · 272671, with a small sword beside it — the symbol Enesco used through 1997, agreeing with the year on her apron. Her title, Cane You Join Us For A Merry Christmas, is one of the line's cheerful puns; she was made for that Christmas only.

For a Precious Moments collector, a 1997 keepsake, or a soft-hearted Christmas shelf.