So THAT'S What Those Are! Claudon Cats

  I have to start this post with an explanation. I have been writing drafts of upcoming posts. Some of them are just titles to remind me of dolls I plan to post on if I do Doll-A-Day again next year. One of them got accidentally posted the other day and 27 people looked at it before I noticed! So for those of you wondering what was up with the Ingrid Bergman post that was blank,there you go. Sorry!
  So today we're talking about some little dolls you may have seen before. I posted about them when I first got them at a yard sale. (That post is HERE.) I bought a bag of miniature houses and these 2 1/2" cats for $5.

These cats were my favourite things in the bag.

   At the time I didn't know who the artist was,and I was having trouble finding anything that even resembled these cats.

The other day I posted their pictures on a Facebook miniatures page and asked if anybody knew who the artist was. Almost immediately somebody came up with the answer! They sent me a link to the artist's old webpage. You can see that page HERE.

His name was  Charles David Claudon. (He went by the name Charles Claudon at the time he was making the cats.) He started by making realistic miniature cats. His business was called Butterfly Cat Studio. At the time he was married to  a lady named Ferbie. (I kid you not.)

 

Ferbie dressed miniature dolls. They decided to make anthropomorphic cats,which Charles would sculpt and  Ferbie Claudon would dress. 

They called the line Kitty Kitsch, (also known these days as Claudon Cats.)

The cats feature hand painted faces and real cat hair.
 

I think that's the whiskers. The hair on their heads looks too coarse, and too long to be cat hair.

They sold the cats at miniature shows from 1981 to 1995,when they got divorced and no longer worked together.
 

They also made some dogs.
 

In 1995 Charles decided to go by his middle name,David,instead of Charles. He was also known as C. David Claudon.

C. David Claudon  went on to publish a book of paper dolls, "The Paper Doll World of David Claudon", and to produce art prints based on his own paintings. 

I did some some additional research and found that,unfortunately, David Claudon passed away in 2016.

If you're interested in seeing more of these wonderful creatures there is an article about them on the website of The Mini Time Machine Museum of Miniatures,which you can see HERE.