the standing caryatid putto, holding aloft a plinth with his left hand and a bunch of flowers with his right, the base plinth bearing a date "1779",

Under Van Nost and Henry Cheere, garden ornament had been enthusiastically reproduced in lead from a couple of yards in Hyde Park Road through Georgian times - the dealers were a west London landmark that had been gently mocked by Hogarth and others. But such statuary was out of fashion by the mid 19th Century. Crowthers, a Chiswick-based firm were responsible for the revival of lead-casting garden ornament in London from 1907. This figure appears to date from around the time of that revival.

This figure, showing erosions and repairs commensurate with age, was a model still in production at Crowthers in the mid 20th Century (See an illustration of this figure in Davis, J. "Antique Garden Ornament", Antique Collectors Club, 1991, p.367).