Vintage Swarovski Silver Crystal Mini Rabbit 7652 – Retired Figurine, Faceted Ball Tail, Black Eyes, Early SC Block Mark, Austria 1980s

A Swarovski crystal rabbit, sitting, an inch and a quarter tall. The body is one faceted ball and the head another, the long ears lie flat back along the neck, and the tail a smaller ball behind. Two black beads serve as eyes. It is the Mini Rabbit, model 7652, small enough for a windowsill or a bedside lamp, where it throws light about the room.

Not carved — cut. Swarovski builds its animals by reducing a creature to solid geometry, then faceting each piece the way a gemstone is faceted and joining them — ball, teardrop, flat ovals. The difficulty is the joins, which have to close invisibly and stay clear; at the ear roots and the tail here they still are.

The faceting is the point of the thing. Every extra face breaks the light again, so it bounces inside rather than passing through — leaded crystal refracts enough to reward the cutting, and ordinary glass does not. The black eyes are the only part that is not crystal, and the only part with any expression in it.

Between 1979 and 1988 — a nine-year window, and both ends of it are fixed. Swarovski has changed its mark exactly once: the etched SC block logo ran until 1988, when the swan replaced it, and this piece carries the block. The model was introduced in 1979 and retired at the same moment the mark changed.

Swarovski of Wattens, Austria — a firm that spent its first eighty years cutting crystal stones for jewellers and dressmakers, and no figurines at all. The Silver Crystal line began only in 1976, after a salesman assembled a mouse out of chandelier parts. Models are retired and never reissued, so one in the older mark is the version collectors look for, and no more will be made.