Female figurehead

Polychrome painted and gilded half-length figurehead of a girl with long, flowing red hair, in a blue dress and holding a golden rose at her breast in her right hand. This example and that of the ‘Bernardo’ (FHD0053) show a variation on the usual form, in which a figure is designed to sit within a modified billet-bead. Unfortunately nothing is known of the ship from which this comes, though the dress is consistent with a British origin in the mid-1850s.