At just a few inches high, this extraordinary Victorian creation is among the most prized pieces of ceramics in Britain today and is expected to sell for up to £50,000 at auction on November 27 at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury. A Martin Ware stoneware bird jar originally made to hold tobacco, it is part of a surprising, surreal and, for its time, amazingly avant-garde menagerie of animals and characters made and sold as mugs, jugs, jars, vases and even spoon warmers. They sprang from the vivid imaginations of four brothers, whose genius left behind a valuable legacy with individual pieces running into the hundreds of thousands of pounds, but whose own tale was one of poverty and, ultimately, tragedy. It all started in the family home in 1873, when the four Martin brothers – Robert Wallace, Walter, Edwin and Charles – fired up their
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