🌿 Provenance
Sourced in the Piemonte region of Northern Italy in the spring of 2025. According to the seller, the piece once belonged to a countryside home where it had decorated a child’s room for decades — cherished not for its rarity, but for its presence.
Description & Function
A ceramic tableau featuring two deer — one standing, one reclining — joined on a shared base shaped like a soft hillscape. The piece is unapologetically sentimental: large eyes, elongated ears, and a high-gloss finish. Entirely decorative, it embodies a visual softness rarely tolerated in contemporary interiors.
It aligns perfectly with Antidote Aesthetics: not as ironic kitsch, but as a sincere homage to the small, the gentle, the seemingly unnecessary.
Origin & Production
Likely produced in Italy or West Germany between 1955 and 1975, a period when ceramic animal figures were widely appreciated in domestic decor. The form and glazing technique suggest origins in regions such as Thuringia or Emilia-Romagna.
Material & Finish
Glazed ceramic in warm, natural tones — brown, cream, with black and white accents on the eyes and ears. The base is hand-painted in soft pastels: blue, green, and beige. Minor irregularities in the glaze point to small-scale, mid-century production.
Dimensions
Condition
Very good vintage condition. No cracks or chips. The glaze is intact with a few delicate craquelures consistent with age. Colours remain vivid. Underside shows a soft matte wear from time and surface contact.
Neo-Infantilism Object
An aesthetic and social shift.
Softness as resistance. Slowness as strategy.
Pastel tones, toy aesthetics, and ritual objects form a new language —
for self-care, identity, and quiet rebellion.
The once-innocent figurine,
reframed as an artefact of an emerging visual movement,
rooted in queer, neurodivergent, and post-pandemic subcultures.
Not regression.
But regeneration.
A sculptural interruption of everything that must be fast, rational, and productive.
The gaze: too large to be naïve.
The form: once cute, now disarming in its softness.
#AntidoteAesthetics #BambiCeramic #VintageDeerLove #TendernessAllowed #StillLifeVibes #FigurativeTenderness #QuietTableau #PostFunctional #EmotionalObjects #DecorativeResistance #VisualSoftness #ReclaimSentiment #SoftIsPower #QueerCuration #QueerTenderness #FemmeEnergy #NonBinaryDecor #CampIsALanguage #QueerDomesticity #KawaiiMinimalism #NeoKawaii #QuietKawaii #Cutecore #PastelPresence #WabiSabiAesthetic #MonoNoAware #NostalgiaAsStyle #StyleStillness #FashionMeetsObject #ArtMeetsSoftness #SculpturalAccessories #TabletopStyle #VisualPoetryInDesign
Certificate of Context
Object title: Two Bambies as a Ceremony for the Unclaimed – Neo-Infantile Relic (No.1)
Curated by: Annelies Nuy
Series: Antidote Aesthetics – Curated Vintage Edition
Year of recontextualisation: 2025
Original object: Glazed ceramic deer figurine (ca. 1955–1975, origin unknown)
Note
An offer is open for discussion — especially when it comes from a kindred spirit.
This vintage piece has been selected, reframed and presented as part of a limited, curated series.
It is not signed as the maker, but as the author of its new context — where softness, sentimentality, and figurative tenderness reclaim their place in visual culture.
Unique piece – 1 of 1
Curated, not manufactured.
Antidote Aesthetics.
A return to softness, sentimentality, and superficial beauty — not as decoration, but as a claim to existential relevance. Within this framework, there is also room for a sanctioned infantilism: the small, the fragile, the figurative — unapologetically present, yet devoid of irony.
This collection gathers post-functional objects that exist outside the dominant codes of contemporary design. Sculptural relics that propose an alternative visual timeline. They raise questions about value, intimacy, and the reintroduction of decorative form into critical discourse.
Presented in digital vitrines or physical space, they do not demand attention but hold it — gently.
Not to evoke nostalgia, but to offer a slower, more affective way of seeing: unguarded, receptive, and emotionally literate.
"With this tribute to Pauline Boty, we draw a line from the vibrant dissent of Pop Art’s only female voice to the mission of Artivisme Féminin — honoring the women in art who carved the paths that today’s generation now walks with renewed agency and vision."
"Pauline Boty C8 Hall 2
Pauline Boty wasn’t a muse. She was Pop Art.💥 Feminine, fierce, and unapologetically bold.
With this tribute, Artivisme Féminin honors the women who paved the way.
#PaulineBoty #ArtivismeFeminin #PopArtQueen #SoftIsPower #FeministArt #WomenInArt #VisualSoftness #KitschReclaimed #ArtHeroines #TenderRebellion
