CHRISTOPHER PROUDLOVE looks at the wonderful creations of the Mouseman, Robert Thompson Of mice and men
SO WHAT will you bid me for this pair of carved oak elephant bookends? £50? £100? £1,000? Sorry, you’re way out. Try £10,000 and no, that is not a misprint. One clue to as to why they were so pricey can be seen on the business side of the bookend on the right: that oval recess is carved with a cheeky little mouse and as we all know, that means Robert “Mouseman” Thompson.
But £10,000? Really? Yes really, and that’s before Somerset auctioneers Lawrences of Crewkerne added their buyer’s premium of 25 per cent (plus VAT on the premium) in the sale earlier this month.
They were special, though. Prices for the traditionally adzed and hand-carved furniture and smaller works, by the now famous Yorkshire craftsman and his workforce, continue to spiral.
The bookends were extremely rare and could be attributed probably to one particular carver: Stan Dodd, working to an order placed in the 1930s or ‘40s by a particular customer: John Weston Adamson (1904-1977).
Adamson lived at Oldstead Hall in
Coxwold, Yorkshire, and probably asked Stan to make him bookends modelled with elephants to reflect his interest in African wildlife. He was buried in Kilburn churchyard, just a stone’s throw from the Thompson workshop.
The workshop continues today, trading as Robert Thompson’s Craftsmen Ltd where there is a visitor centre and museum showing unique pieces created by Robert himself. A pair of new oak bookends, each hand-carved with a mouse, can be had in the shop for £192 including VAT.
The significance of the mouse will become clear. Robert Thompson (1876-1955) was the son of the Kilburn village joiner and wheelwright, so sawdust was in his blood.
However, at 15, and encouraged by his father, who was keen for him to have a better start in life, the boy was apprenticed to an engineering works in nearby Cleckheaton.
He hated it but stuck it for five years. At 20, Robert persuaded his father to give him work in his carpenter’s shop. Working away had done him a great deal of good, though, for it was on his journeys to Cleckheaton that the boy first encountered Ripon Cathedral. There, Robert marvelled at the intricate medieval oak carvings that captured his imagination. He vowed to revive the traditional craft of oak carving which had flourished in the 15th and 16th centuries but which was by then a lost art.
He had been an above average pupil at the village school and in his spare time he made a study of oak, how to carve it and of the ancient tools used, notably the adze, an ancient, axe-like instrument which gives the surface of wood its distinctive ‘hammered’ finish.
During the working day he helped his father, but soon the commissions started to come his way. The first was a pulpit for a local church, then a crucifix for Ampleforth Abbey. Word of the quality of his craftsmanship spread quickly and work flowed in from numerous other ecclesiastical quarters.
He built the choir stalls at Workington Priory, interior screens for Benedictine monks at Fort Angus in Scotland and the library at Ampleforth College, complete with huge tables, one of which weighed more than a ton.
This was a prototype of a refectory table at Peterborough Cathedral and the inspiration for a massive table
– one of many notable domestic commissions – for Frampton Court in Gloucestershire.
By 1919, Robert had virtually taken over from his father, giving him the opportunity to develop his own ideas and to experiment with designs based on original 16th and 17th-century styles.
His earliest patron at Ampleforth Abbey was Father Paul Nevill (18821954) for whom he produced furniture, latterly in association with the great architect Sir Giles Scott (1880-1960) over a 30-year period from 1920. Scott is particularly well known for his work on the enormous library at Cambridge University and the chapel at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford As a result, Robert was commissioned by York Minster and by scores of parish churches throughout England. Other major domestic commissions included Upsall Castle, Thirsk and Brough Hall, Catterick.
By the 1920s, Robert’s style of sound construction, employing simple lines, expertly seasoned English oak, cowhide and hinges and fastenings fashioned from wrought iron became highly sought after in homes around the world.
In 1928, he and his staff of 10 workers sent a dining table and set of four chairs to his first American customer. Another order came from South Africa for the home of the Bishop of Natal, while to a New Zealand home was sent a large owl carved in oak – with the ever-present mouse held in the bird’s claws.
The origin of the mouse signature came about by accident. Robert was carving a beam in a church roof when one of the men working with him grumbled that in spite of all their hard work, they were as poor as church mice.
This caught Robert’s imagination and there and then, he carved a mouse on the beam. The idea stuck in his mind and he liked the idea of the busy little mouse chewing away at the oak with its chisel-like teeth.
He felt it symbolised his own work – industry in quiet places, which he adopted as his motto – so he vowed to carve a mouse on every piece of his work thereafter.
Sadly, however, to this day that original church mouse has never been found.