Vintage Royal Doulton Melanie HN 2271 Figurine – Designed Peggy Davies, Blue Dress Yellow Shawl, Original Hangtag, Bone China, England 1970s

A Royal Doulton figurine of Melanie, HN 2271, designed by Margaret "Peggy" Davies in 1964 and produced from 1965 until the firm retired the model in 1981. Melanie stands in a cobalt-blue gown with a bright yellow shawl knotted at the shoulders and a yellow underskirt showing at the hem, her dark chignon caught with a red ribbon, her right hand lifted to hold a small bouquet of yellow roses. She wears the original gold Royal Doulton hangtag at her neck — the small printed Royal Doulton / Fine China medallion that almost every retail figurine left the factory with and that nearly every second-hand example has since lost. The base reads in full Royal Doulton — Melanie / HN 2271 / COPR 1964 / Doulton & Co Limited / Made in England / Bone China — with four registration numbers underneath.

Royal Doulton has held the Royal Warrant since 1901, and through the second half of the twentieth century the firm built the most collected English bone-china figurine catalogue in the world. Peggy Davies (1914–1989) was the figurine modeller at the centre of it: she joined Doulton in 1939, became chief modeller after the war, and designed over 250 individual HN figurines through her career — the Pretty Ladies, Vanity Fair, Reflections, and Images lines all run through her studio. Melanie sits with Melissa, Mary, Megan, and Michele in the Davies "M" series — a small subset of her named ladies designs that collectors specifically chase.

The figurine is hand-painted at the Doulton works (every fold, every shadow, every rose petal painted on by an individual painter before firing), and 1981 was the year Royal Doulton retired the model — retired HN numbers move into the secondary collector market only, and the surviving examples with intact original hangtags are the ones serious collectors hold for.

A piece for the Royal Doulton HN collector chasing the Peggy Davies named-ladies series, for the "M-series" letter collector, for the mid-century English-figurine display cabinet, or as a high-end Mother's Day / retirement / anniversary gift.