Although this figure is only credited by Royal Worcester under its model name In The Ring it was almost certainly modelled by Doris Lindner at Bertram Mills’ Circus in 1935, at Olympia or on tour, along with a companion piece Circus Horses Rearing, mould no.3179, also first issued by Royal Worcester in 1936. It represents the equestrienne Milly Yelding who performed the Courier of St. Petersburg act with nine grey stallions in the 1934-1935 Olympia show, and with the 1935, 1936 and 1937 summer tenting seasons, billed in 1935 and 1936 as The Courier of St. Petersburg, and in 1937 as Huzarina’s Sensational Ride. The museum already owns a piece of original artwork for one of the posters illustrated with the act [S.1461-2014], showing Yelding, or Huzarina, with nine-in-hand, and a printed poster for the circus at Lincoln [S.147-1994] featuring Huzarina’s Sensational Ride. The act was created and performed in the early 19th century by the great equestrian Andrew Ducrow (1793-1842), initially standing astride two cantering horses, grabbing a long rein from the harness of new horses that entered the ring at intervals and passed below him, ending up with as many as nine ‘in hand’. Each horse represented a country through which the courier passed on his way to Russia. The act as performed by Ducrow is depicted on a pierced brass plate on a clock owned by the museum [S.877-1981]

Born in Llanyre, South Wales, Doris Lindner studied sculpture at St. Martin’s School of Art, the British Academy at Rome, and at W. Frank Calderon’s School of Animal Painting in Baker Street. Royal Worcester discontinued all its glazed Parian and earthenware ranges in 1931, and having seen some of Lindner’s abstract sculpture and Art Deco figures exhibited at Heal’s in the 1920s, its managing director Joseph Gimson asked several freelance modellers including Doris Lindner to do some trial models for new bone china figures being introduced by the factory in 1931 and launched in London at the Beaux Arts Gallery. Lindner’s work for Royal Worcester continued for the next fifty years. Doris Lindner designed an extensive series of limited edition champion horses and bulls for Royal Worcester in the 1960s, and the demand for her limited editions in the 1960s and 1970s and the commissions she undertook established her reputation and confirmed her place in the long tradition of fine porcelain production at Royal Worcester. She always worked from life, making sketches and modelling in plasticine.