This is a very attractive and harder to find Victorian Staffordshire figurine, which dates to about the 1870s.
It is a genuine 19th Century example and in excellent damage free condition.
It is a spill vase - which you would have put on your mantlepiece or in the kitchen and you would have popped long tapers or spills to light lamps and fires etc into. The spill container takes the form of a tree stump to the left-hand side - and which is painted with a bright orange interior. The spread of spills would have resembled the branches of the tree when on display.
This one is a rarer subject and I have as yet been unable to find another quite like it.
The spill vase shows a gamekeeper dressed in his country attire - including the little brown fitted "jockey type" cap. He rests one arm on the tree stump and the other one holds onto his rifle which is held close to his body on the right. He has his little gamekeeper' brown leather bag slung on a strap over his shoulder.
I just adore the gamekeeper's hound dog who sits at the bottom of the tree - he is modelled in 3-D and his little snout sticks out slightly - he is white with black spots all over - which I take it means that he is a Dalmatian.
Overall height is 11 inches - with a width of 7 inches and a depth of about 2 3/4 inches.
Weight: 1.3 kg
In good antique condition - with no chips or cracks.