Polito's Menagerie

This splendid mantelpiece ornament is probably the most celebrated and certainly the most elaborate of early nineteenth-century Staffordshire figure groups. It represents a high point in quality and elaboration of those models made for a wide market before makers increasingly concentrated on the very much cheaper 'flatbacks' (figures with only rudimentary details on the reverse, made using fewer and simpler moulds). Although made of earthenware, an inexpensive material, all the figures and architectural components would have been formed in separate two-part moulds, then carefully assembled by a 'repairer' before firing and decoration with painted and sponged enamels, so the group would have been relatively costly to produce.