I was asked to look at a property clearance at the Manor House at Market Overton in Leicestershire. The property was elegantly furnished with a lovely balance of mainly continental but other antique furniture.
Every now and again you find an item that excites you but you don't quite know why? Being somewhat diversioned by continental marquetry in the property a sideboard did not tick any of the boxes for this apart from it was clearly exciting.
I duly left the property and advised that I would come back with further guidance. Having identified the cabinet maker as Augustus Mason I then looked to other works and with whom he had worked on designs. This brought up the name William Lethaby. Once the pieces started to come together I contacted the British and Irish Furniture Makers online, the Furniture History Society and the University of St Andrews in relation to this piece.
Everyone confirmed this to be an exibition piece from 1906 and we were able to advise the client on the history.
In turn some family digging filled in the rest of the puzzle and we went to auction.
The lot sold for £5,000 on Wednesday 14th January 2026 and was catalogued as follows.
Augustus Henry Mason (1863/4-1912) for William Richard Lethaby (1857-1931). An important Edwardian Arts & Crafts oak and marquetry sideboard, exhibited at the 1906 Arts & Crafts Exhibition at The Grafton Gallery, having an arrangement of a raised shelf with strut supports, over a serving platform with three frieze drawers, each with parquet and floral marquetry designs, with brass loop handles over a chevron banded frieze, raised on four octagonal forelegs with stepped bases and rondel inlays, joined by a low level stretcher, and having four square chamfered rear legs, the side prospects having ebony inlay geometric designs, 126cm high, 260cm wide, 60cm deep.
Notes: Courtesy of assistance from Clarissa Ward of British & Irish Furniture Makers Online, The Furniture History Society and Annette Carruthers, Honorary Senior Lecturer, School of Art History, University of St. Andrews. - The sideboard was exhibited by Miss Antrobus and it is likely she commissioned it. In 1984, it was included in the catalogue of an exhibition about Lethaby by Sylvia Backemeyer and Theresa Gronberg, ‘W R Lethaby 1857-1931 Architecture, Design and Education’, Lund Humphries 1984, where there is an illustration of the sideboard on page 95, with an image of the inlay, both listed on page 94, cat. 142, to be in a private collection. The Victoria and Albert Museum Furniture Dept. has a copy of the same photograph and a similarly decorated dresser is in the Victoria and Albert collection. Miss Antrobus was recorded as living at 69 Cadogan Square in London at the time of the exhibition. Alice Camus was a hat and dress maker with a shop, atelier and flat at 6C Sloane Street, London, (who also has her own works in the Victoria and Albert collection), she then acquired the sideboard from Miss Antrobus, which it was later taken to France until returning in 1988 to The Manor House at Market Overton in Leicestershire.
