Robert Thompson - Mouseman

Small-scale Mouseman carvings were typically made in Kilburn for promotional purposes – attracting custom at the Yorkshire Show or similar trade events. Rarities continue to bring muscular sums in the salerooms.

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

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

Wife describes how collector husband Chris Hancock’s latest artworks had to fight for space in a family home

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.

Ecclesiastical commissions are integral to the Mouseman story – it was the friendship between Father Paul Neville and Robert Thompson that led to the work at Ampleforth College – but in commercial terms these can be relatively difficult pieces.

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’.

Furniture by Robert ‘Mouseman' Thompson and more recent productions from the Kilburn workshop attracted the usual enthusiasm at Tennants (20% buyer’s premium).