Large Tunbridge Ware Tea Pot Stand with Mosaic featuring Climbing Roses. Tunbridge Wells; labelled for Edmund Nye with a handwritten notation inside stating’10th January 1849. The Rosewood Frame has four chamfered edges each with a Berlin wool-work style climbing rose inside two pairs of banded keylines. The frame is filled with a’petit point’ needlework pad of stylised geometric pattern; the whole sits on four large bun feet. Good with regard to tile completeness – one patch of four contiguous missing tesserae and some singles lost; one of the corners has lost 8-10 pieces; one corner of the pad is a little threadbare and there’s another square of four missing stitches; the base still has it’s original lining paper affixed, but has a split across its entire width; this does not affect the stability of the piece and is, obviously, underneath so only becomes apparent should you turn the thing over. This piece is something of a revelation, as the pad with its’petit point’ embroidery on penelope or needlepoint canvas is very much representative of the process by which the original Berlin Wool-work patterns were produced and these – of course – inspired the whole use of micro-mosaics on Tunbridge Ware in the first instance; it’s fantastic to see both art-forms in such harmonious proximity. WE could not find another complete example anywhere. This may possibly be unique. I have been involved in the antiques business since 1971. My career took a leap forward when I joined Bonhams in 1976. Some five years later I became head of the Decorative Arts department.