Royal Doulton Figurine Penelope HN1901

Penelope (HN1901) was designed by Leslie Harradine and issued by Royal Doulton from 1939 to 1975, standing 7 inches tall as part of the Harradine Classics range. The figure presents a young woman seated at her embroidery — pink dress with yellow floral detail and a blue bow at the side, a white bonnet with matching blue bow, her foot resting on a footstool as she works a floral design, a basket of yarn set beside her. It is a portrait of domestic contentment rendered with the unhurried warmth that defines Harradine's finest seated figures.

The name is apt in the deepest sense — Penelope of Greek myth kept her suitors at bay by weaving and unravelling, her needlework a quiet act of faithfulness. Harradine's Penelope carries no such weight, but the subject of a woman absorbed in her craft has its own particular stillness: a figure who asks nothing of the viewer except to be observed and appreciated. The modelling of the seated pose, the bench, the footstool and the yarn basket all reward careful examination, with the kind of accumulated detail that Harradine handled so naturally.

A thirty-six year production run — from 1939 through to 1975 — is among the longest in the Harradine Classics range, a sustained vote of confidence from collectors across multiple decades. Pieces from the earlier part of the run carry the pre-war and wartime backstamps that close date-marking collectors actively seek, making the backstamp on any given example a quiet point of interest in its own right.

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