page_title: China fairing
section_title: The seven categories
hierarchical_section_title: China fairing / The seven categories
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of part of the collection of china fairings held by Tudor house in Southampton.
context_page_description: A china fairing is a small porcelain ornament, often incorporating figures, ranging from about three inches to about five inches in height, and depicting a variety of scenes, humorous, political or domestic. The ornament almost always incorporates a base and many fairings have a caption describing the scene or making some point inscribed on that base. Although the majority of fairings are simply decorative, they were occasionally made in the form of pinboxes, matchstrikers or holders for watches or small mirrors. Some fairings were made in pairs, for example, "Grandpapa - Grandma", two separate statuettes of a small boy and girl, each dressed in adults' clothing.
  China fairings are so named because they were given away as prizes at fairs in the Victorian era, in much the same way that we would win a coconut at a fair today, although some were manufactured simply for sale. They first started appearing in the middle of the nineteenth century and remained popular until the start of the First World War.
  Genuine fairings are now keenly sought by serious collectors.
context_section_description: Authors generally classify fairings into seven categories based on their general value and rarity. Category A contains the most common fairings, and the categories go up through B, C, D, E, F and finally X for the rarest and most valuable fairings. Books on fairings sometimes assign price ranges to these categories, but these are relied on less and less as time goes by. After all, when fairings are traded the price agreed upon depends on how keenly each party wants the trade. The categories are still retained as a convenient way of classifying fairings but are no longer relied upon for setting prices.
caption: Part of the collection of china fairings held by Tudor House and Garden in Southampton
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