Maddy Gordon’s house is full of heads – more than 3,000 of them, lined up single file on shelves that stripe the walls.

Gordon, who lives in Scarsdale, N.Y., is a prominent collector of vintage head vases. She’s been publishing the quarterly Head Hunters Newsletter for 17 years. The newsletter boasts about 500 subscribers scattered across Canada, Europe, and someone in every state.

“Headhunters are a special bunch,” she says. “They’re attracted to faces, to the smile, the eyes, the hands. They can spot tiny differences between heads. There’s nothing wrong with collecting coins or anything else, but I think headhunters are just a special kind of people.

Head vases are ceramic figures of heads and shoulders with large holes in the tops of their heads. Head vases were originally intended for displaying dried flowers. Indeed, many of them were sold with the flowers already inserted. The top-of-the-head openings were too small and shallow to hold water and live plants.

Mass-produced in the 1940s and ’50s, and to a lesser extent through the 1960s and ’70s, head vases range in height from 2 to 14in, with most being in the lower half of that range. They were largely made in Japan, as a sort of postwar cottage industry. Only a handful of American companies made them.

Right now, Maddy says, the 7in vases “are hot. They’re very popular right now.”

Most vintage head vases depict teenage girls and young women. Many models were available in multiple sizes and colors. If you look, you can find clowns, babies, Huck Finns and celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, but, as Gordon put it, “Beautiful young girls are always the most popular.”

Terri Gonzalez of St. Louis Park, Minn., is another collector of head vases, which she calls “doll heads.”

“When I was a little girl, my mom had one. I always liked it. Years later, I was at a florist on 38th Street in Minneapolis – I was an adult with kids by then – looking for a gift for my mother-in-law. I was just going to get her flowers. Then I saw one and I got it. I gave it to her and never expected to get it back, but then she gave it back because she knew I liked it so much and because I had started collecting them.”

Apparently, head vases are contagious. Her mother-in-law began collecting them too.

This was in the mid-eighties.

“It was fun then,” she says, “because you could get them at garage sales for a dollar or two. It was something I could have out that the kids could play with and I wasn’t worried about them breaking because they weren’t valuable. Not many people were collecting them. I had a cousin who was into antiques but still thought it was funny and kind of strange that I was collecting these things.”

These days, prices for vintage head vases start at $2.50 (“Madonnas – that is, religious ones – aren’t doing so well right now,” says Gordon) and go up to $7,000 for a one-of-a-kind head.

“It’s just like with shoes,” she says. “You can get a pair of rubber sandals for one price and a pair of designer shoes for another price and everything in between.”

Many kinds of antiques require elaborate precautions to prevent fading or other age-or-display-related damage. Head vases, not so much.

“If you live in California, you have to put tacky stuff on the bottom. Because of earthquakes. Other than that, don’t put your valuable ones where children and dogs can get them. Insure them. Make sure your shelves are secure. Take the same precautions you would take with any other breakable antique or collectible.”

You can learn more about head vases by attending the Florida convention, held the third week in January in Orlando-Kissimee. It’s the only all-head-vase convention in the world. In addition to the Florida convention, you can find heads through dealers, flea markets, other antique shows, and online auction sites like eBay. But, she warns, “Half the heads listed on eBay [as vintage] are fakes.”

How can you tell if a head vase advertised as vintage is authentic?

“I can’t explain it,” Gordon says. “Serious collectors can spot them. They’re not as fine.”

Some details to look for: Fakes often say “Nippon” - as in, Nippon, Japan – on the bottom. True vintage head vases tend to have a very matt finish - “95 percent of the time they do.” Fakes, or “repros,” tend to be shinier.

One thing to keep in mind is that not all head vases are vintage.

“There are some new ones being made now that are new and different. They aren’t fakes - they aren’t being sold as anything but new. They come from China. They’re much less expensive.”

If you’re not sure about an auction item, she advises people to ask the seller flat-out, “Is this a vintage head vase?” If the seller is evasive or answers, “I don’t know, I got it at an estate sale,” it’s almost undoubtedly a fake.

To avoid getting taken, Gordon advises fledgling collectors to get a book or two on head vases “so you know what the old ones look like.” She also says they should come to the convention, where she puts on a slide show about recognizing fakes.

Resources

Gordon also suggested visiting www.mylovelyladies.com, a “great resource” run by a passionate collector named Patti Johnson.

The site includes subscription details for the Head Hunters Newsletter, links to dealers and other websites, the Head Vase Spa (repairs), links to the half-dozen or so books that have been published on the topic, and a lot of other information.

To subscribe to the Head Hunter Newsletter, call Gordon at (914) 472-0200 or write to the following address. The newsletter costs $24/year. Head Hunter Newsletter, c/o Maddy Gordon, P.O. Box 83H, Scarsdale, NY 10583

Books

Collecting Head Vases: Identification and Value Guide by David Barron

Head Vases: Identifications and Values by Kathleen Cole

Head Vases Etc.: The artistry of Betty Lou Nichols by Maddy Gordon

Schiffer Publishing, 2002