Car Mascot, Paperweight or Bookend?
The creative and design genius of Rene Lalique is well established but what of his business acumen?
Lalique's sense of what the customer wanted and taking opportunities to repurpose works to fit those needs can be seen with many of the models sold as car mascots. Throughout the same period of production, 20 of the 28 models were also sold as paperweights (presse-papiers). This made a lot of sense as the weighty car mascots made them more fit for purpose than many of those models designed and marketed by Lalique specifically as paperweights! Others (the Sirene, Naiade, Vitesse) were also sold as statuettes, though only the Vitesse was officially catalogued by Lalique as a car mascot or Bouchon de Radiateur. After 1937, the demand for car mascots or hood ornaments had diminished. Whether through remaining stock (most likely) or with market forces, you could continue to purchase some of the designs as bookends (Serre-Livres) mounted on a black glass base (also signed 'R. Lalique'). These bookends are often sold as car mascots today usually having been removed from the black glass base. They are identical but care should be taken with any damage or modification resulting from having been mounted as a bookend (no differently from having been mounted in a radiator cap or scuttle mount for a car).
Bookend models included those car mascots which could not be sold a paperweights as they would not stand up on their own. These were Falcon, Small Dragonfly, Epsom. The Comet and Five Horses would also not stand up on their own but were never offered as bookends, probably as they were early production models and no longer available at the time other avenues for their sale would need to be explored. To contradict that a little, both the Longchamp A (double-mane) and Longchamp B (single-mane) versions were made available as bookends. Two models, the Eagle Head and Chrysis, were available post-1955 as bookends on clear glass bases. Irrespective of how these pieces are signed they would not have been manufactured pre-1945. Chrysis was catalogued pre-1945 as a paperweight (but not as a bookend) and in its purest form, without the groove for a mounting ring (see image above).
Interestingly, Victory, one of the most striking Art Deco images and which would stand on its own, was only ever catalogued as a car mascot. It was likely deemed too large to be of practical use either as a booked or paperweight but remains today an arresting and definitive decorative sculpture of the Art Deco period.
Finally, as a means of using up both stock of statues (Sirene and Naiade in this case) or vase stoppers (from Meplat Sirenes avec bouchon figurine) and bakelite lighting bases, these models leant themselves to a marriage with little or no modification and a very attractive decorative piece. No stone unturned to turn a sale and allow no waste. They are very rare to see today but we do have one of each example for sale.