Late Period, 664-332 BC. A turquoise glazed composition shabti with fine facial detailing, wearing a tripartite wig and plaited beard; the lower body and legs with hieroglyphic text, arms folded across the chest, crook and flail in the hands; pillar to reverse inscribed with column of hieroglyphs naming the deceased’s mother; mounted on a rectangular wooden base. 92 grams total, 15.5cm including stand (6"). Property of a Cambridgeshire gentleman; acquired on the UK art market; previously from the collection of Lionel Walrond, born 1927; accompanied by an information slip on Lionel Walrond. Lionel Walrond was born in 1927 to tenant farmers of a dairy farm in Somerset. Following the unfortunate death of both parents when he was just four years old, Lionel was raised by his aunts and an uncle. When his school days came to an end, Lionel was drawn to a career in keeping with his childhood interest in history and archaeology, leading to the discovery of three Roman mosaics in Somerset before his 18th birthday at Lufton and Low Ham (the Aeneas mosaic now in Taunton Museum"). He eventually founded his own museum on the farm in a converted WWII American Army Nissen hut. In 1955, he moved to Stroud to take up a curatorial post at Stroud Museum (’The Museum in the Park’) where he worked as a curator for 37 years. Lionel was a member of numerous local and national historical societies, and was elected a Fellow of the Museums Association, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1979. Lionel Walrond, FMA, FSA, died on 14 September 2020, aged 92.