Mouseman - Robert Thompson

Two sales of the classic furniture include items featuring direct family history

A 43-lot private collection of Pilkington’s ceramics from Manchester opened Tennants’ (24/22% buyer’s premium) sale of 20th century design held in Leyburn on October 7.

The 33 pieces of ‘Mouseman’ furniture on offer at Carlisle auction house Thomson Roddick (20% buyer’s premium) all came from a Cumbrian Georgian country house where they had been since at least before 1950.

Carving once available in low four figures now sells for five in North Yorkshire saleroom

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Three lots at Tennants’ (22% buyer’s premium) traced the history of Stan Dodds (1928-2012) – the first and foremost of the Critters.

These two oak boarded chests, made to similar techniques four centuries apart, were offered for sale recently.

Re: your article in ATG No 2538 (A Trio of Arts & Crafts designers in focus) including a Mouseman oak blanket chest sold at Sheffield Auction Gallery for £12,000 hammer, which features the mouse carved in recess rather than profile.

While the market for post-war wares by Thompson’s of Kilburn – particularly the animal and figure carvings – has grown substantially in recent years, the ‘prime period’ for Mouseman collecting remains the 1920s-30s.

Smaller decorative pieces by Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson (1876-1955) continue to excel in the saleroom.

Morphets (20% buyer’s premium) of Harrogate sold a Mouseman bureau for a tub-thumping £36,000 on April 15.

The highlight of a £75,000, 30-lot private collection of Robert Thompson oak carvings sold by Tennants was an anthropomorphic figure of The Mouseman of Kilburn.

Dunhill Aquarium table lighters painted by Margaret Bennett and husband Alan in the 1950s-60s remain popular among collectors in these non-smoking days.

The highlight of a private collection of Robert Thompson oak carvings to be offered by Tennants on March 6 is this curious anthropomorphic figure of the ‘Mouseman of Kilburn’.