A CARVED AUSTRALIAN BLACKWOOD DRESSING TABLE BY ROBERT PRENZEL Circa 1908 The rectangular top with a high back supporting a swinging mirror above a pair of small drawers, a pair of frieze drawers and cupboards flanking a kneehole below, on a plinth base, the back with an Art Nouveau-style pediment finely carved with a spray of flowering banksia and surmounted with a figure of a possum, the cupboard doors carved in relief with, respectively, a standing raven and a sugar glider in flight beneath fruiting foliage, the outer sides of the back also carved in relief with foliage 187cm high, 137cm wide, 48.5cm deep PROVENANCE: Part of a suite of bedroom furniture commissioned from Robert Prenzel circa 1908 by Margaret Laidlaw as a gift for her husband, Thomas Haliburton Laidlaw, and installed at Kilora , Hamilton, Victoria Thence by descent in the Laidlaw family, Western District, Victoria LITERATURE: Terence Lane, Robert Prenzel, 1866-1941: His Life and Work, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1994, p. 18 (referring to the suite generally) and relatedly p. 20, fig. 34 (illustrating the wardrobe from the suite - lot 86 in the present auction)