Vintage Royal Doulton Tuppence A Bag HN 2320 Figurine – Mary Nicoll, Mary Poppins Feed The Birds, Hand Painted, England 1970s

A Royal Doulton figurine — HN 2320, Tuppence a Bag — the bird-woman from the Feed the Birds moment in Mary Poppins, caught mid-action with one hand offering seed to a pigeon perched on her wrist and the other reaching for the next handful. She is sitting low on the steps, settled into the pose for the long haul; her blue paisley shawl falls in proper folds around the shoulders, the green dress gathers at her knees, the black brimmed hat tips just slightly forward. A wicker basket of yellow grain stands at her side; two more pigeons are gathered around her, one beside the basket and one nestled low against her hem.

This is one of Mary Nicoll's compositions, and her instinct for sitting figures shows in it — the figure is not posed but settled. The weight reads in the dress: the way it pulls at the knee, the way the shawl actually drapes rather than sitting stiff. Look closely at the paisley pattern on the shawl — each tear-shape is filled rather than just outlined, with the small inner curl picked out in a darker blue, which is hand-painted work rather than printed. The basket weave on the wicker is incised before glazing and then dry-brushed in warm brown so the relief catches the light. The pigeons are painted with three separate greys — a pale dove-grey for the breast, a darker slate for the wings, a hint of greenish iridescence on the necks where light reflects — three colours instead of the easier one.

The base mark is fully there: Royal Doulton's crown-lion stamp at the top with Hand made and hand decorated / Made in England / Royal Doulton Limited England arched around it, then Royal Doulton / HN 2320 / TURPENCE A BAG / Modelled by Mary Nicoll / © Royal Doulton Tableware Limited 1967 in green script, and a small red painter's quality-control mark at the lower right. The spelling reads TURPENCE on the stamp rather than the song's Tuppence — an in-house mould variant that Doulton kept through the model's three-decade run. The copyright on the base reads 1967; production began the following year and continued until 1995, so this example sits somewhere in that window — no datestamp narrows it further.

A figurine for the HN-series collector, for the Mary Nicoll specialist (her sitting-figure compositions are her most-chased work), for the Mary Poppins / Feed the Birds memorabilia collector, for the bird-lover's shelf, or as a nostalgia gift to anyone who remembers the 1964 film.