The Story Behind the Collection
Fifty Years
One collector. Every piece chosen by hand. Fünfzig Jahre
Every figure in this gallery was gathered by one woman over the course of fifty years.
She was the wife of an American Air Force pilot, and their life together came the way military life always does: new orders, packed crates, and horizons a long way from home. Picture a young officer's wife overseas, finding her first little Hummel in a shop window. A rosy-cheeked child in lederhosen, painted by hand, looking like everything warm about the place she had landed. She carried it home wrapped in newspaper. It would not be the last.
A new figure for a birthday. Another for an anniversary. One more for a homecoming.
Over the years the shelf grew into a small porcelain village. She chose pieces for the stories they told: a boy fleeing a furious goose, a street singer caught mid-song, two girls sharing a secret on a garden fence. Among them stands a tribute to the Berlin Airlift, when Allied pilots kept a blockaded city alive from the sky. In a pilot's home, that one must have meant something special.
She dusted them, rearranged them, and knew every one by heart. Half a century later, the time has come for her collection to find new homes. Each piece has been carefully catalogued, photographed exactly as it is, and offered one at a time, so every figure can go to someone who will treasure it the way she did.
With care, from her shelf to yours.
