Dancing girl
Desmo Ltd.
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
c. 1920 - 1960
Materials
Chrome
Measurements
158 mm (Height)
Place of origin
Birmingham
Order this imageCollection
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire
NT 515223
Summary
Chrome, a dancing girl, Desmo Ltd, c. 1920-60. A chrome Art Deco figure of a naked dancing girl, her right leg and arms raised, looking to her right. A car mascot manufactured by Desmo Ltd. of Birmingham, probably in the 1920s or 1930s. On an integral rectangular baseplate, set into a black marble rectangular base.
Full description
Desmo Ltd. was a company founded in Birmingham in 1922, that took advantage of the rapid increase in car ownership between the Wars, to supply a range of accessories for automobiles, including a wide variety of often imaginative car mascots. These were designed by George Seymour, the founder of I.M.A. Limited, which manufactured for Desmo. Desmo mascots continued to be produced into the 1960s. The mascot of a dancing girl is in the Art Deco style, so probably dates from the 1920s or 1930s, and it appears to be one of the rarer Desmo models. The Anglesey Abbey example, with its rectangular base, seems in fact to have been made as a decorative statuette in its own right, since it lacks the threaded tang that would be needed to screw a car mascot into position onto the front of a vehicle. This can be seen on another example sold online through wightbay.com in 2018. Lord Fairhaven owned another chrome car mascot, in the form of a rearing horse (NT 516572). Jeremy Warren 2019
Provenance
Bequeathed to the National Trust by Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966) with the house and the rest of the contents.
Credit line
Anglesey Abbey, The Fairhaven Collection (The National Trust)
Makers and roles
Desmo Ltd. , manufacturer