Cinderella’s Arrival is one of several spectacular Lladro High Porcelain pieces featured at WMODA and two Great Dragons guard our enchanted world of ceramic art. They were both modeled by Francisco Polope, one of the most brilliant master sculptors at the Lladró City of Porcelain in Valencia, Spain.
Polope began working for Lladró in 1971 at the age of 14 and gained experience in different areas of the creative process. He also studied sculpture at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios de Valencia, the city’s most famous school for arts and crafts. In 1978, Polope became an assistant in the sculpture department and he joined the team of Lladró sculptors in 1981. Cinderella’s Arrival, which was launched in 1994, was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken at the City of Porcelain at that time although now it has been upstaged by Carnival in Venice. Fantasy and fairy tales have often inspired Polope’s creations. Love, marriage, faith and childhood dreams are among the other themes that Polope has explored in his long and distinguished career with Lladró.
Francisco Polope has traveled to Japan, China, Singapore, Korea, Philippines and the Caribbean to present the Lladró creative process. In 2009, he visited the United States for the first time with his latest High Porcelain sculpture The Great Dragon. Visitors to the Florida Antiques & Gifts Expo were in awe of his talents as they watched him start with a lump of clay on Friday evening and finish with a beautiful sculpture on Sunday. WMODA is proud to feature two of Polope’s Great Dragons in unique colors. In Chinese culture, dragons are powerful and benevolent symbols unlike the aggressive fire-breathing dragons of Western mythology. They control ater, rainfall, typhoons and floods and represent prosperity and good luck.
Francisco Polope has modeled many of the prestige Lladró sculptures at WMODA including Winged Beauty, Arion on a Seahorse and Bacchante on a Panther. The High Porcelain collection represents the zenith of Lladró’s technical achievements with complex modeling and intricate hand-painted enameling.
