This Victorian mother-of-pearl and abalone shell card case is carved with a portrait of George Lord Byron, the most flamboyant and notorious of the major English Romantic poets.

Extracted from Antiques Trade Gazette | Terence Ryle

The crisply carved image, made c.1840, a decade or more after Byron’s death, follows the profile portrait by Richard Westall that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.

An object with great appeal to collectors of Byron memorabilia, it sold for a punchy £5000 (estimate £150-200) at Mellors & Kirk (20% buyer’s premium) in Nottingham on November 27.