Snow baby

A Snow Baby (or Snowbaby) is a small figurine, usually of a child, that depicts some aspect of the Christmas holidays or of winter sports. The traditional snow baby is made of unglazed porcelain (bisque) and shows a child dressed in a snowsuit; the suit itself is covered in small pieces of crushed bisque, giving the appearance of fallen snowflakes. Figurines of other characters were also made, including Santa Claus, elves and animals such as penguins and polar bears.

The oldest Snow Babies were manufactured in Germany in the 1890s, and were typically either all white with a painted face, or painted in pastel colors. With the onset of World War I, production stopped; when it resumed after the war ended, the snow babies were less finely detailed in their porcelain and finish. In the 1920s, Japanese manufacturers began to produce Snow Baby replicas, though they were generally of a lesser quality than those made in Germany. In the late 1980s an American company called Department 56 began producing a new line of Snow Babies in Taiwan.

Snow Babies were created as reusable cake toppers in the 1890s by Johann Moll, a German confectioner, based on early nineteenth century sugar dolls used as Christmas decorations. They were originally manufactured by Hertwig and Company, but other porcelain factories in Germany began creating the figurines soon after.

The release of the Snow Baby figurines coincided with the birth of Admiral Robert Peary's daughter in Greenland while he was on an expedition to the North Pole in 1893. She was the first non-indigenous baby to be born that far north (13 degrees south of the pole), earning her the nickname "snow baby" from the Inuit. The public's fascination with Marie and the discovery of the North Pole in 1909 helped popularize the figurines.

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