Record price for Mouseman chair made by war hero featured in Guy Ritchie's action-comedy
It’s thought to be a record auction price for a single chair made in Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson’s Kilburn workshops – a sale achieved in just 70 seconds after a brief but intense bidding war at Duggleby Stephenson’s York saleroom.
The chair was the work of 21-year-old Graham Hayes, the son of a wealthy Yorkshire businessman, who spent two years training at Kilburn, intending to start his own business.
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Hide AdHowever, the Second World War intervened. Hayes was commissioned and became one of the founding members of the Small Scale Raiding Force, a commando team brought together by the Special Operations Executive to carry out Winston Churchill’s instruction to create “a reign of terror down the enemy coast”.


Captain Hayes led one of the assault teams in “Operation Postmaster”, the daring 1942 raid, recently depicted in Guy Ritchie’s film The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
Tom Howard, a furniture specialist with Duggleby Stephenson, said: “The adzed oak armchair was brought along to one of the regular valuation days at the York Auction Centre by Hayes family descendants who had inherited it. At that stage we were not aware that it had been made by one of the great commando heroes of the Second World War, but even as just a very nice pieces of Mouseman furniture we rated it at £1,200-£1,800.
“Once the Hayes story emerged interest went through the roof.
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Hide Ad“Advance commission bidding topped double the initial valuation more than a week ahead of the auction.
“On the day the bidding got off at £5,000 and there followed a quick, fierce, online battle including bidders all over the country.
“The hammer went down at £10,500, the chair knocked down to a private bidder based in Cheshire – just seventy seconds later.
“That’s a record Mouseman result for Duggleby Stephenson and we believe it’s a record auction price for any single chair made in Robert Thompson’s Kilburn workshops.”
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Hide AdOperation Postmaster saw commandos board and capture three enemy vessels moored in Santa Isabel on the Spanish Island of Fernando Po off the West African coast.
However disaster followed on a mission just a few months later when a commando team carrying out a night-time reconnaissance of the Normandy beaches was ambushed by a German patrol.
Hayes escaped and with the help of the French Resistance made it down the escape route to the Spanish border but he was betrayed and handed over to the Germans.
After being held in solitary confinement at the notorious Fresnes Prison near Paris for nine months he was executed by firing squad on July 131943 – four days after his 29th birthday.
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Hide AdRobert “Mouseman” Thompson's furniture is popular for its high quality, traditional construction methods, and the distinctive carved mouse that appears on every piece every piece of his work from altars to ashtrays.
The workshop in Kilburn still continues to produce his designs in the same tradition of craftsmanship today.