A carved Australian blackwood wash stand by Robert Prenzel, circa 1908, the rectangular marble top with a high back and an asymmetrical arrangement of a small cupboard, drawer, and open compartment below, raised on tapering square supports, the back with an Art Nouveau style pediment finely carved with a spray of flowering wattle and surmounted with a figure of a perched kookaburra (carved all round), the central panel of the back carved in relief with a wren amidst fruiting foliage, the cupboard door also with fruiting wattle, all four legs carved in relief with stylised waratah decoration, 141 cm high, 142 cm wide, 51 cm 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)