Vintage Royal Doulton The Gamekeeper Figurine HN2879 – Green Shooting Jacket, Black Labrador, Shotgun, Bone China, England 1980s

A Royal Doulton bone-china figure of a gamekeeper and his dog — a young man in a green shooting jacket and flat cap, roll-neck sweater beneath, kneeling on one knee with a shotgun over his shoulder and a black Labrador sitting close at his side. It is one of Doulton's country characters at its best: a whole way of English rural life caught in a single quiet pose.

The modelling is careful and realistic — the set of the man's jaw, the fold of the tweed, the alert stillness of the gundog, the game at his feet, all standing on an oval of naturalistic ground. That realism is the signature of Eric Griffiths, who led Royal Doulton's sculpture studio from the 1970s and whose name is printed into the base; a figure modelled by the head of the studio himself carries a little extra weight with collectors.

The base carries the green Royal Doulton mark, Hand made and hand decorated, with the model number HN2879, the title The Gamekeeper, Modelled by Eric Griffiths, and © Royal Doulton Tableware Limited 1983. It was produced from about 1984 and is now retired. A small painter's initial (SB) beside the mark is the hand of the decorator who coloured this one.

A word on condition: with any Royal Doulton figure the fragile points — the gun barrel, the cap peak, the fingers, the dog's ears and tail — are worth a close look in hand. Nothing is visibly chipped or restored in the photographs.

A figure for the Royal Doulton collector, for the country-house and field-sports shelf, for the black-Labrador lover, or as a substantial gift for a shooting or gundog man.