I have always been drawn to the exquisite attitudes and ravishingly painted vestments of the 18th-century Derby or Bow figures – Britannia, for instance, or Minerva, the goddess of wisdom. Staffordshire figures created in the middle of the 19th century seemed a little crude in comparison, but I always thought they would look lovely on a dinky cottage fireplace. Don’t ask me what happened but I’ve since gone mad for them. Mad. They are a little crude, it’s true, but that’s their total charm. I found a brace of 1850s Scottish lairds standing by a gnarly tree stump (it’s actually a vase) and brandishing bows, with a giant spaniel between them. Then a while later I discovered on Ebay two single standing Scotsmen, similarly dressed in fir-green dresses (of remarkable brevity) with ostrich-plumed hats, buccaneer boots and orange belts, one holding a dead deer by its legs, the other with a (normal-sized) spaniel at his feet and a bow in readiness. They are perfect as a trio.
Now I was really getting into it. I found a flatback (that is, not decorated behind) of the Duke of Cambridge on a gleaming steed at AG Hendy & Co in Hastings. And a happy male couple, greeting one another warmly in the woodland (found in a crowded vitrine in Durham House Antiques in Stow-on-the-Wold; funnily enough, Tudor House Antiques just up the road had one too). At least I thought they were greeting one another until I read the description. The pair were the source of a newspaper scandal in 1866. It turns out that the gamekeeper, Thomas Smith, has the poacher, William Collier, by the throat. His hound is not embracing Collier but jumping up in an act of aggression. A brace of emphatically dead pheasants lies at the men’s feet. Collier had a wife and seven children to feed. He shot Smith then beat him to death with his rifle, so hard, in fact, that the barrel broke. The murder weapon was found hidden in a drainpipe near Collier’s home in Kingsley, Staffordshire, and he was condemned to hang. However, the rope was not strong enough, and it frayed and snapped. The convict fell to the floor, then moments later stood up, discombobulated but alive. The crowd of some 2,000 hissed and booed at the ineptitude of the executioners, who carried on regardless. Two years after this, public executions were outlawed. But people obviously thought Collier and Smith were worthy of remembering, over a fireplace, or somewhere to spark conversation.
Then I sleuthed ‘The Lion Slayer’ (captured so evocatively here by Lawrence Mynott), which shows a giant in a kilt, his very dead lion artfully draped at his feet. The first lion to be bred in Britain was born in Edinburgh in 1812; he was named Wallace, after the great Scottish hero. In 1845, five years after the Edinburgh Zoological Gardens (Scotland’s first zoo) opened, several beasts were bought from American showman Isaac van Amburgh, including a lion. They were treated miserably. In fact, I saw in the National Portrait Gallery a Staffordshire of lion tamer Ellen Blight (I’ll be looking for a double!), prettily dressed in a short crinolined skirt. In 1850, aged only 17, she was mauled to death by big cats during a performance in Chatham. In ‘Death of the Lion Queen’ the sculptor has depicted the tiger involved with a leopard’s spots presumably tigers were little seen then.
Not long after I had moved into my Bloomsbury apartment, my friend Georgina Godley called me with some exciting news. She had spotted in her local Teddington antique shop – Montpelier – a Staffordshire figurine of a sailor and a soldier, arm in arm. More me than me. I look at it over breakfast every morning.
Read more from Hamishsphere:
- Hamish Bowles goes shopping in Tangier
- As embroiderers flit about the King’s gardens, Hamish Bowles finds the golden thread
- Merriment is on the menu as Hamish Bowles cruises and carouses along the Grand Canal
A version of this article also appeared in the December 2024 issue of ‘The World of Interiors’. Learn about our subscription offers. Sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter, and be the first to receive exclusive stories like this one, direct to your inbox
