Bidspirit auction | Boy Seated in a Roadside

Boy Seated in a Roadside Niche Still Bank - Rare & Significant Porcelain Bank. Austrian - Early 1900's - 6” Tall. Not certain about the meaning of the imagery portrayed in this pretty bank. However, the young man looks as if he intends to collect a road toll from all passers-by. A deposited coin will allow you to move forward. Ulrike Riegraf-Blank has astutely assigned the nomenclature NIPPES (in English, bric-a-brac) to these small beautiful decorative toy banks. Her decades long research indicate that such pieces were made in factories throughout Central Europe, but chiefly in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Germany as early as the late Victorian period.