Garden Decoration Turned Out to Be a Rare Sculpture

For more than 70 years, a family in England used what may be a museum-worthy sculpture as backyard décor. As the BBC reports, the lichen-coated bust in a Cotswolds garden turned out to be an 1854 marble by Harriet Goodhue Hosmer, a pathbreaking American neoclassical sculptor and early feminist figure, identified during a routine house valuation by Chorley's Auctioneers director Thomas Jenner-Fust. "They had no idea it was marble, no idea who it was by, and no idea it was so valuable," he said.

Depicting Daphne from Greek mythology and inscribed "me fecit Roma" ("Rome made me"), the piece is Hosmer's debut work; only a few marble versions exist, with three confirmed in US museums. The bust, expected to sell for upward of $24,000 at auction in Gloucester, had long been assumed to be a cheap reproduction by the family. Says Jenner-Fust of the find: "You never really know what you're going to find next, and that's the thrill of the chase. It also gives us a bit of comfort as auctioneers that there are still things out there, waiting to be discovered." The auction site is here.