Three 19th century porcelain figures from a Peoples of Russia series consigned to Lincoln auction house Golden Young & Mawer (20% buyer’s premium) by a local vendor attracted interest from the US to Russia.
Standing between 8¼-9½in (21-24cm) tall, they were titled in French to the front and Cyrillic to the reverse but were otherwise unmarked.
The Gardner factory, set up near Moscow to challenge the St Petersburg Imperial Factory, began producing the series from c.1780. They were so popular that the Imperial followed suit about 10 years later and continued production up to the Revolution.