Bernard Leach St Ives stoneware vase – £7900 at Capes Dunn.
Hard-paste figures of Russian ethnic characters and workers have appeared at English auctions on a number of occasions in recent years (ATGs passim), generally to keen interest from the Motherland and eastern Europe.
First marketed by the Gardner factory near Moscow in the late 18th century, and thereafter produced by the Imperial factory and its variously named successors at Leningrad after the Revolution, their latest sighting was at Heaton Mersey, Cheshire auction house Capes Dunn (18% buyer’s premium) on May 30.