Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 January 4

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 4

Indian head car ornament.

I was recently given a family heirloom that I remember playing with as a kid in the late 1950's and I'm trying to find out more about it - but drawing a blank.

There are lots more photos here: http://sjbaker.org/wiki/index.php?title=Indian_head_car_ornament

• Object is approx 10cm tall, 8cm wide and has a 2.8cm hole in the base. It's very heavy and appears to be made of chrome plated brass.
• We believe it's a car hood/bonnet ornament from a car that belonged to my great grandmother in England - probably sometime between 1920 and 1940.
• We've seen kinda-similar items on Pontiac cars - but they have thicker bases and are somewhat different in form - and it seems unlikely that a Pontiac would have been in the UK.
• Guy Motors used similar mascots and were certainly making cars in the UK in about the right timeframe...but I don't see any of their mascots that are a match for mine.
• There are various letters that look like they were hand-engraved into the metal BEFORE it was chrome plated:
  • At the tip of one of the headdress feathers on the left, it says "H'ADY".
  • Across the left side of the base, it says "H Buana" (although that last 'a' might be a 'd')
  • Across the right side of the base, it says "Ed PARIS".

A google image search turns up THIS and THIS - from "Guy Motors" - but they are only vaguely similar. I don't see anyone named "Ed Paris" or "H Buana" who seems like they'd have been anything to do with this.

Any further information would be useful - but specifically, I'd like to know what kind of car it was originally a part of - what date it is - whether it's worth anything.

SteveBaker (talk) 00:03, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Look for [guy motors] in google images. It was a British company that used an Indian head. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:02, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I already did that - none of them match. SteveBaker (talk) 01:04, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Oops, sorry, I overlooked that. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:20, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I did find someone who sold an identical mascot HERE - but he describes it as "Accessory Indian Chief ( #507 - SOLD ) Polished Brass ~ Unsigned" - which suggests they didn't know where it came from...but mine does appear to be signed. Weird. SteveBaker (talk) 01:06, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Not the same figure, but the mid-1920s Pontiac had a similar Indian chief's head , i.e. roughly realistic as opposed to their stylized streamlined version of later years. Interestingly enough, those things were originally ornaments on radiator caps. After the radiators went under the hood, the hood ornaments remained. An intriguing puzzle you've posed! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:20, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Pontiac hood ornaments are widely collected and seem to to be well-documented - they are a poor match for what I have. Also, it's hard to imagine how a Pontiac hood ornament ended up on a British car in the 1920's to 1940's. SteveBaker (talk) 01:51, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

It's possible Pontiacs were sold in England at one time, but it's not a match. I ran across something called Indian Motorcycles, which also uses an Indian head logo, but it's not a match either. Guy is the closest I've seen so far, but they always seem to have their slogan "Feathers in our Cap" or some such, on the headband - not so with yours. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:07, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

You used to be able to buy decorative car mascots and fit them to your your car regardless of the make - a between-the-wars version of "pimping your ride". See our article Hood ornament. I found this one which had been fitted to a Sunbeam. If you were really flash, you could get a glass one by René Jules Lalique which lit up at night[1]. So I think you should be looking for a manufacturer of brass ornaments rather than a particular vehicle maker - however I haven't been able to find anything about your marks on Google. Alansplodge (talk) 13:32, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose that's a possibility - in which case it's unlikely that I'd be able to find what kind of car it was originally bolted to. But I'm surprised that if it was an after-market one that none of the text written on it shows up as a manufacturer name in Google searches. SteveBaker (talk) 14:22, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Automobile Quarterly Spring 2003 says; "The variety of mascots available during the 1920s was vast - France even had an annual Concours du Bouchon de Radiateur to judge the year's finest mascot designs..." (p. 32). Alansplodge (talk) 14:42, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I wonder whether the words: "Ed PARIS" engraved into the thing mean that it was made in Paris - or maybe that the artists' name is "Edward Paris" or something. Knowing that so many were made in France makes me lean towards the idea that it was made in Paris...but who knows? SteveBaker (talk) 18:25, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I thought the Jeep Cherokee Chief had one, but it seems to have only had an Indian head emblem: [2]. StuRat (talk) 15:31, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Yeah - but the Jeep didn't exist until 1941, and then it was a model name, not a company name...and the first Jeep to be named after an Indian tribe was in the 1970's - so this is a definite non-starter for an object that I know for sure was around in the late 1950's and is presumed to date from the 1920's or 1930's. SteveBaker (talk) 18:25, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

There's a remarkably similar one (but not identical) here - scroll down about a third of the page. Alansplodge (talk) 17:00, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Yeah - I found that one too. At first I thought it was identical - but it's not. It's very close to being identical - but (for example) the thin band at the front edge of the headdress is smooth in my version and has some ornate decoration on the one in those pictures. But other aspects of it are so close to being identical (like the diamonds and triangles further back on the headband) that they have to have come from the same original sculpture. Also, the one on that site is described as "Unsigned" where mine has what appears to be a signature from "H Buana" and "Ed Paris". Mine has a mount that extends a couple of centimeters out the back of the head - theirs has a hexagonal base that's tucked right under the head. I suspect that the difference is that theirs was intended as a radiator cap ornament and mine has a bolt mount - suggesting that it was a purely decorative thing. Very strange. The plot thickens! SteveBaker (talk) 18:25, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I did a Google search on "bouchon radiateur buand", as the latter, or Bruand, were more likely French surnames than 'Buana'. This led me, tantalizingly, to what I think is a duplicate of your item, sold on the French eBay site at some point. The exact wording of the Google search result snippet was:

"Bouchon Radiateur Mascotte | eBay

www.ebay.fr/itm/bouchon-radiateur...-/300924792786 - Translate this page

bouchon radiateur.mascotte in Auto: pièces, accessoires, Voiture ancienne: ... de plumes.il est signé H.BUAND ou BRIAND PARIS. et FADY sur le coté. haut."

Unfortunately the item is no longer available to view, but the description makes it almost certain that it is the same item, listed as a car radiator mascot. - Karenjc (talk) 18:05, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Good work Karenjc - I found " Mascotte "Tête d'Indien" H. Briand éditeur à Paris. Bronze argenté. Monture déportée pour fixation d'un thermomètre. H : 8cm".... Scroll down the page almost to the bottom. You have to create an account to see the price! Alansplodge (talk) 18:38, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) A little more searching suggests Briand may possibly be a pseudonym of the Art Deco sculptor Marcel Bouraine, working out of the Le Verrier foundry in Paris -see for example this link and this one. - Karenjc (talk) 18:46, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

And another "Tête d'Indien"; "Estimation 300 - 500 € : Sold for 319 €. Worth a few bob then. They have dated it to the 1920s. Briand also did cockerels, peacocks, snakes[3], Minerva's head[4] and a cherub riding a pair of horses[5]. Alansplodge (talk) 18:53, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Oh wow! You guys nailed it! What I read as "H Buana" could easily be "H Briand" (the cursive "ri" looks like a "u" and the final "d" looks like an "a"...but that's definitiely it). So this thing is valued at €300 - €500 and actually sold for 319 - which is considerably more than most car mascots sell for (usually $35 to $60). The one in that photograph is heavily worn - there are many places where the chrome has worn away, where mine is pristine. That presumably puts mine at the higher price point. The date of 1920 is definitely plausible for a car that we believe was driven somewhere between 1920 and 1940. Also the one in that auction is utterly identical to mine - where the other version we found has a little more decoration and a different base. Great detective work! Many thanks! SteveBaker (talk) 22:59, 5 January 2014 (UTC)