Royal Doulton Figurine Sailors Holiday HN2442

Sailor's Holiday (HN2442) was designed by Mary Nicoll and issued from 1972 to 1979, standing 6.25 inches tall. It belongs to Royal Doulton's Sea Characters series — the group of nautical character studies that Nicoll developed across the 1960s and 1970s and which draws one of the most loyal and specifically focused collecting audiences in the HN range.

The subject is a sailor on shore leave, occupied with a model sailboat — the figure of a working man at rest, hands still busy with the craft he knows, even on his day off. Nicoll rendered him in a richly coloured palette of purple trousers, mustard yellow jacket and green shirt, with a black hat completing the ensemble. It is an unaffected, warmly observed piece, the kind of honest character study that Nicoll excelled at — rooted in real life rather than idealism, and better for it.

The Sea Characters series sits alongside the Street Vendors and the character figure studies as one of the ranges where Doulton's modellers were most clearly working from observed life rather than decorative convention. Sailor's Holiday has the additional appeal of the model boat prop, which gives the piece its immediate narrative and makes it particularly attractive to buyers who collect nautical subjects as well as those who collect within the HN range. The 1972–1979 run of seven years keeps it firmly in the category of pieces that take genuine looking to find in good condition.

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