GROUP OF ‘COMPANY SCHOOL’ PAPIER MACHÉ FIGURINES OF SERVANTS, TRADES AND CASTES, ALONG WITH A BUFFALO HORN PALANQUIN INDIA, 19TH CENTURY comprising 11 figurines, all standing except for 2, moulded and decorated in polychrome, clothed in cotton, each on a square platform bearing etiquettes inscribed in English with their identifying roles, including ‘Housekeeper’, ‘Waiting Boy’, ‘Malabar Dancing Girl, ‘Dhoby’, ‘Noor Dancing Girl’, ‘Bearer’, ‘Brahamin’, ‘Tailor’, ‘Lapidary’, ‘Maity’, the collection includes a palanquin in the form of a chest on four feet with protruding long carrying poles on either end, a water carrier hanging from one end, the interior decorated in red velvet along with a reclining figurine (figures: 21 cm max high; palanquin:  46.5cm long.) Qty: (12) Provenance: By family repute acquired by Edward Green Balfour (1813-1889), surgeon and naturalist in India; thence by descent. Balfour travelled to India in 1834 as an assistant surgeon in the Madras medical service, and ended his career as surgeon-general in the presidency. An acknowledged polymath, he wrote on subjects including Indian languages and literature and forestry in addition to medicine. His most influential work in his own day was his Enyclopaedia of India and Southern Asia, published at Madras in 1857. Today he is also remembered for his pioneering ecological writings, which explored what he believed to be the 'direct relationship between deforestation, climatic change, and environmental degradation' (ODNB). Part of his collection was sold in this saleroom on 21 June 2023, notably lot 75 The Balfour album, Shaykh Muhammad Amir of Karraya or studio (fl. c. 1830-50). Note: These naturalistic figures offer an extraordinary insight into life in India in the 19th Century under the British Raj, before photography was introduced. In the same way Company School paintings reflect contemporary life, so do these figures, which were made as souvenirs for Western patrons as early as the 1820s. They were made at Krishnagar, a village near Calcutta, as well as at Hatwa, Datan (near Saran), Muzaffar-pur, Dacca, Burdwan, and later, Lucknow and Poona. For a village market scene with figures now in the Peabody Museum of Salem, see Stuart Cary Welch, India: Art and Culture 1300-1900, New York 1985, pp. 91-2, fig. 45.