A Chinese jardiniere once used as a fish bowl by Horace Walpole (1717-97) is to return to his Strawberry Hill home, writes Laura Chesters.
The 17th century piece decorated in the ‘Three Friends of Winter’ pattern with pine, prunus and bamboo was owned by Walpole (the 4th Earl of Orford) and was with him at his home in Arlington Street before being brought to Strawberry Hill sometime in the 1760s.
The jardiniere has a macabre story from its time with Walpole. His favourite cat, Selima, drowned in it while trying to catch goldfish. The incident was later immortalised in a mock-heroic ode by Walpole’s friend (an Eton schoolmate), the poet Thomas Gray, called Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes (1747).