Eventually, Barbara gave up
drawing and painting and after
the second world war, a new art
director was appointed at the
Doulton factory, Walter Heywood,
himself an excellent artist. He
adapted some of the remaining
drawings by Barbara and then
started to do his own in a near-
identical style.
Until the early 1950s, the name
Barbara Vernon still appeared on
much of the Bunny-kin products and
these early (pre-1953) examples do
have a special appeal to collectors
and attract premium prices. Today
of course the Bunnykins range is still
going strong with new designs being
added, but serious collectors tend to
concentrate on the earlier ranges.
It’s difficult to generalise on prices for
certain scenes on certain items can
be rare and in more demand than
others. Most will be worth at least
£30 and while baby bowls, dishes
and mugs are perhaps the most
common, larger pieces such as milk
jugs and teapots were produced
in smaller numbers and are much
harder to find, hence their prices
being much higher. A Bunnykins
teapot for instance can fetch as
much as £350.
Bunnykins items have a clear back
stamp featuring three rabbits and
one way of dating items is that
the earlier pieces did not have
Registered Trade Mark on them - this
was introduced in 1954.
Today, the Royal Doulton and
Bunnykins brands are owned by
a Finnish company who continue
to produce Bunnykins wares for
an international market. Barbara
Vernon died in 2003 and her passing
brought great sadness to collectors
worldwide – there are Bunnykins
collectors cl ubs as far afield as
Australia and America.
Constantly immersed in her religious
duties, I don’t know if Barbara paid
much attention to the commercial
success of her creations, but she
could scarcely have imagined when
she skilfully painted the little rabbits
she saw in the garden of her family
home in Shropshire that almost a
century later, those characters
would still be being enjoyed by a
global audience of many millions.
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