VTG Wolf Vine Greneker Store Display Mannequin Full Size Woman Head Torso Legs

Description

Vintage Genuine Wolf Vine Greneker Store Display Mannequin Full Size Woman Head Torso Legs. She measures about 70" tall total; the legs are about 41" and the top section torso with head is 29" long. Marked Greneker in many places with patent numbers. Base is marked Shoe 7 & Heel 2 1/2. Back side of torso is marked Wolf Vine Greneker. One of the legs can be removed for easier storage and transport. The pieces have a unique snap together metal locking system. Good solid condition with a few scuff marks but no cracks or repairs - see my 12 detailed photos.
One of the first companies to offer mannequins with faces was La Vigne, a Paris-based manufacturer that hired a mask-maker to develop papier-mâché heads that could be fitted onto their figures in the mid-19th century. Various suppliers were soon making heads from a mix of materials like papier-mâché, wax, and plaster composition to achieve the most realistic appearance. Many were set with glass eyes and had wigs made from real human hair.
With the shift to full-fledged human figures, mannequins immediately began to reinforce social norms and ideals. “The mannequin figure itself has so much meaning to it,” says Hale.
“At the turn of the 19th century, you had bustier mannequins with tiny waists. Suddenly, going into the teens, they got a little more slender. Close to World War II, female mannequins had these broad shoulders. After World War II ended and the soldiers were coming home, all of a sudden the female mannequins were very voluptuous, almost like sirens calling them home.”
Like the larger fashion industry, mannequin design echoes seasonal styles that come and go, both in regard to technological improvements and the way we view our bodies.
“It’s often the body attitudes and facial expressions that reflect what’s going on socially,” says Hale. Accordingly, the stiff, unnatural bodies of early mannequins were well-matched for the Victorian Era‘s restrictive ideas about women’s rights and fashions, which dictated they wear many layers of heavy fabric over tight-fitting corsets.
In order to sustain this fictional world, mannequin technology had to keep up with advancements in other fields. Though wax allowed 19th-century sculptors to create highly detailed bodies and facial features, the switch from gas lamps to electric lights exposed the material’s weakness: Under the intense heat of store window light bulbs, wax mannequins began to melt.
Meanwhile, the French company Siegel and Stockman created even more abstracted mannequins, with simplified, geometric features perfectly suited to the popular Art Deco style.
“Siegel and Stockman went one step beyond to create mysterious mannequins that resembled aliens with luminescent eyes,” the earliest figures with bald-heads and featureless faces, explained Hale in an article she wrote. Made from papier-mâché and plastic, “their faces and bodies were abbreviated renditions of the human form, with expressions that seemed to mask feelings and retain a certain aloofness.”
By 1937, when Lester Gaba created the lifelike Cynthia for his Manhattan publicity stunt, shoppers were familiar with mannequins as abstracted versions of perfection.
Gaba later wrote in “The Art of Window Display” that the evening he first brought Cynthia home with him, the famous milliner Lilly Daché stopped by for a visit. Daché was so intrigued by his mute girlfriend that she encouraged Gaba to bring Cynthia to the opening of her new salon the following week.
Despite this eccentric performance, the World War II era generally embodied a return to somber mannequins wearing the restrained fashions of the time and doing their part to support our boys fighting in Europe.
Wartime also brought material advancements, and in the 1940s, Wolf & Vine (now called Greneker) became the first company to release a completely plastic mannequin. To the company’s dismay, the extreme conditions of display windows caused a chemical reaction in the new material, turning the mannequins a greenish color.
Even after spending around 0,000 to develop this plastic model, Wolf & Vine was forced to take it off the market.