An oak figure titled Eastern Slave Girl by Thomas Henry Kendall – £3600 at Halls.
Born in 1837, he became a luminary of the Warwick school of wood-carvers and furniture-makers, renowned for high Victorian elaborate decorative artistry.
He apprenticed under (and later succeeded) James Morris Willcox and assisted on the creation of the Charlecote Park Buffet, a sideboard John Ruskin described as being worthy of Michelangelo.
Among Kendall’s celebrated works are the series of intricately carved oak panels commissioned for the House of Commons members dining room.
On show
The figure shown in Kendall’s Warwick showroom.
This 4ft 4in (1.3m) high statuette of a girl in diaphanous robes holding an urn is known from photographs of Kendall’s showroom in Chapel Street, Warwick, which remained open and largely untouched long after his death in 1919.
It was one of a dozen pieces acquired by the vendor’s parents when the artist’s studio was demolished and the contents sold in 1957. Offered for sale at Halls (20% buyer’s premium) in Shrewsbury on March 23, it sold online at £3600 (estimate £3000-5000).
As reported in Books & Works On Paper, ATG No 2539, a second folio edition of the King James Bible that featured the missing last two and a half pages of the Book of Revelations produced in perfect facsimile by the young Kendall took £17,000 in this sale.
Owl sugar caster
Edwardian sugar caster modelled as an owl – £5500 at Halls.
Jewellery and silver performed particularly well, the highlight being an Edwardian sugar caster modelled as a standing owl and marked to both body and cover for the Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Co, London 1905.
Weighing 30z and standing 9in (23cm) high, it was estimated at £4000-6000 and sold for £5500.
