Chris Barela's is the tightest collection we carry — 16 pieces live on the site, all bronze, all Hawaii sea life, priced $340 to $9,055, median $1,020. Where some of our sculptors range across dozens of subjects, this one has stayed close to reef and open-water creatures, cast small enough to sit on a shelf.

Small bronzes, tight editions

Sizes vary more than you'd expect from a collection this size. The "Keiki" series — three color options, blue, green-and-yellow, green-and-blue — is barely an inch tall, cast at 1 by 3 by 2.5 inches in editions of 500, priced at $340, the floor of what we carry from Barela. At the other end, "Sunny," a bronze octopus, runs 14.5 by 7.25 by 18.5 inches in an edition of 250, and at $9,055 it's the most expensive piece in the line. "Creeper," at 17 by 13 by 9 inches, comes close to it in scale for a fraction of the price, also in an edition of 250.

Editions are recorded on 15 of the 16 pieces, running from 250 casts up to 750 — "Violet" is the only piece in the line that reaches that number. Two of the pieces are turtles: "Honu," the Hawaiian word for green sea turtle, and "Sidekick, bronze turtle," each cast in an edition of 250.

An edition of 250 to 750 is tight compared to a lot of bronze on the market — plenty of collectible sculpture runs into the thousands. A smaller run simply means fewer casts will ever exist of that specific piece — a fixed number set at the foundry, not something that grows back. "Wylie," at 5.5 by 9.25 by 7.25 inches and $1,830, is a fair example of the collection's typical scale once you're past the smallest Keiki pieces — most of what's here lands somewhere in the middle, not miniature and not monumental.

What's actually available

Eleven of the sixteen pieces on the site currently run $1,000 to $2,500, which puts most of this line in the middle of what we sell rather than at either extreme. None of the variants here are tracked against a running stock count, so there's no shrinking number to watch — what's listed on the site is what's orderable right now.

These are tabletop pieces — light enough to ship without freight, easy to place on a shelf or a desk, and a reasonable way to start a bronze collection without committing to something monumental first. If a piece you remember from Barela's line isn't showing on the site, call us and we'll tell you plainly whether it's still something we carry.

— Steve Schlag, founder, Dolphin Galleries