Top lot at the Diss architectural salvage sale held by Gaze last Saturday was a 10ft long Shepherd's Hut which sold for £3,000. Second highest lot was a 9ft high three tier compo fountain and 12ft diameter pool which fetched £1,700.
 
But the third highest lot was a pair of those ubiquitous large slender vineleaf-encrusted amphora-shaped lidded urns, or more correctly 'urn finials', of which these were probably composition in a terracotta colour. But from where does the model originate?
 
The modelling has slight variations in different versions. The shape is based on ancient Greek vases being either amphora or hydria shaped. Amphorae were more slender and hydria were wider-bodied. The model is in two halfs with the lower half starting with a square base and rising tongue and dart moulded and fluted circular foot with a moulded band and an everted break followed by a stylised stiff leaf to the lower body below the break. The upper half has a vine-leaf and grape cast body with lobed moulding followed by a frieze of more leaf and grape with anthemion to either side. The handles are twin loops with acanthus or leaf cast ends. The lid echoes the lower body stiff leaf with more vine leaves and a pine cone knop finial. The design seems to be c1920s but could be 40 years later or earlier. It could even be a stylised re-interpretation of an ancient classic.
 
The moulding work and style seems to be Italian, similar to the age-old Imprenuta potteries in Tuscany whose earliest recorded output was in the 1100s. According to some American garden pottery importers these vases are reproductions from the antique - well possibly, but the model does not look earlier than 20th century.
 
In the 1980s, when this model of urn was first sold in the UK, in English salvage yards, the urns were believed to have come from a Scandinavian pottery, possibly Höganäs in Sweden, but even if they were manufactured there it seems unlikely that such a Mediterranean-looking model could have originated there.
 
In the 2000s the model started to be reproduced in the UK and was renamed by some makers and sellers the Romsey Urn.
 
We would like to know who first modelled this urn. Any suggestions gratefully received.