This statuette of Eve is by John Bell (1811-1895) and was manufatured by Messrs Elkington and Company. It is one of the earlier acquisitions by the Museum, and was originally in the collections at the Museum of Ornamental Art in Marlborough House, London, later to become the South Kensington Museum. It has recently been suggested that this piece is a smaller version of the half life-size marble figure that John Bell carved for Lord Truro.

John Bell enrolled as a student at the Royal Academy in 1829. His best-known public sculptures are the Brigade of Guards' bronze Crimean War memorial, erected in 1860 in Waterloo Place, London, and America, a figure group on the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens. W. T. Copeland and Henry Cole's Art-Manufactures reproduced many of his subjects in Parian porcelain, including his marble sculpture Babes in the Wood of 1842, now in the V&A. He was also an industrial designer and prolific correspondent.

Elkington & Co. was one of the leading British silver manufacturers of the 19th century. The firm was probably established before 1836 as G.R. Elkington & Co. in Birmingham. It was known by various names, particularly Elkington & Co., until 1963. By the 1860s it employed over 1,000 people. Elkington's created grand presentation pieces for international exhibitions as well as mass-produced dinner services, dressing cases, tea wares and flatware. Between 1836 and 1840 Elkington's patented processes such as electrogilding and electroplating, which used electricity to coat cheaper metals with silver or gold. Imitation 'silver' products were thus made available to a much wider section of the population. Elkington's also used this technology to manufacture electrotype copies of famous art objects, such as the 16th-century cup and cover on display in the Bromley-by-Bow Room of the British Galleries.