Big hitters in cricket fan’s lifetime collection

One fan of cricket’s lifetime collection of antique and collectable ‘cricketana’ will be sold in Kent next month.

The late Thomas Gould was a cricket fanatic all of his life, playing with his classmates at Highgate School in North London, before joining Wanstead Cricket Club, Essex CC after the Second World War and, until his recent death, was one of the longest-serving members of the MCC.

Now his huge collection of memorabilia will be sold on the second day of The Canterbury Auction Galleries‘ three-day auction from August 6 to 8.

Some of the highlights of the collection include:

• a terracotta standing figure of WG Grace in cricketing attire leaning on a bat. The 32ins high statue, signed and dated 1885 by its maker, sculptor Edwin Roscoe Mullins (1849-1907) is a direct copy of his bronze presented to the Marylebone Cricket Club by Mr F. R. Evans and is estimated at £700-1,000.
• Grace appears in a second lot among a group of 20 Vanity Fair framed and glazed colour prints of cricketers by the famous caricaturist Leslie Matthew Ward (1851-1922) who signed his work with the pseudonym “Spy”. They are estimated at £750-1,000.
• A charming 19th-century English School painting, meanwhile, shows a grandfather teaching a clutch of children how to play. The rural scene shows the old man with walking stick about to throw underarm to the boy in the crease while his brother and sisters cheer him on. The oil on canvas is estimated at £400-600.
• A late 19th-century Doulton Lambeth stoneware three-handled tyg moulded in relief with three cricketers and a stoneware two-handled loving cup moulded with two cricketers from the same factory, the latter dated 1883, are estimated together at £200-300.

Elsewhere in the sale, cricketing fans can battle it out for an interesting framed display of 12 19th-century “Traveller’s Samples of Cricket Buckles”, which carries an estimate of £200-300;  and a Victorian silver prize cup, inscribed “Presented to Robert Daws Esqr. by the Supporters and Players of the Ripley Original Cricket Club as a token of gratitude for interest taken in the Advancement of Cricket Season, 1870“, estimated at £120-140.