Pair of Minton Majolica Wall Brackets, Modeled as a Girl and Boy Baby Merchildren, each wearing a wreath of bullrushes and wrapped in fishing nets against clumps of green glazed rushes. Impressed marks to reverse include the letter 'M' and Minton date cipher for 1859.

In Susan Weber's three-volume tome, MAJOLICA MANIA, recently published by Yale University Press, Martin Levy discusses Royal Patronage of Minton majolica: "Though many of the items ordered by the queen and prince consort in the late 1850s have been dispersed, surviving examples in the Royal Collection include...a pair of wall brackets, each in the form of a merchild wrapped in fishing net, which was given to Queen Victoria by Prince Albert for her birthday in 1858."

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Susan Weber, MAJOLICA MANIA: Transatlantic Pottery in England and the United States, 1850--1915. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2020, Vol One, p. 179.

Sotheby's New York, English Majolica From a Private Collection, Sale number 6958, Lot number 159, March 11, 1997. Identical pair sold at Sotheby's but lacking the wooden wall shelves. In the catalog notes, Nicholas M. Dawes writes, "the top of each pierced with a hole, presumably to take a lug for a wall shelf."