Featured Elephant bookends

Does anyone know who made these? they have some marks like 17 C and "Foreign"

 

Probably Japanese. Could be German or Italian. After the war, sometimes things imported from former enemies were marked Foreign rather than naming the country.

Are they heavy? I've had bookends that were slipcast as these and then filled with sand and sealed with plaster to add weight.

 

They are very similar to Cowan Pottery

 

Cowan Pottery was an Ohio pottery company. No need to mark them as foreign.

https://clevelandhistorical.org/index.php/files/show/1981

 

Here's some more, but of course we don't think they are French: https://www.catawiki.com/en/l/36818715-foreign-art-deco-pottery-crackle-carved-elephants-bookends

 

Sorry, posted too soon. Didn't mean that I thought them to be Cowan Pottery. Just in my mind similar. For some reason I have always equated elephant bookends with a wedge base to be theirs. Perhaps I have confused it with another company.

 

They're light and fragile for bookends

 

I think that supports the idea of them being Japanese. The sand-filled bookends I've had have all been Japanese (though that certainly doesn't make it a sure thing).

 

I think the faces have a Japanese style to them, rarely see elephants with such detail. Must be made for export then with the latin numerals stamped into the base

 

Foreign generally appears on post WW1 German and post WW2 German/Japanese. Never French.