Scale: About 1:16. A full hull model of the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights ceremonial barge (circa 1780), used by City of London Livery Companies, made entirely in wood with metal fittings and painted and gilded in realistic finishes. The hull is a traditional Thames ‘wherry’ shape, made plank-on-frame in oak and unpainted apart from a frieze along the entire wash strake which has gilded filigree decoration on a saxe blue ground. The long cabin positioned aft has a convex roof, a row of ornate windows on the port and starboard sides set in blue panels with gilded swag decoration above, a carved and gilded frieze on a red ground below the windows, and three large pairs, arranged two-by-two, of gilded animal sculptures on the cabin roof in the forms of lions, bullocks and sheep. Between the pair of sheep is the figure of a man, presumably depicting Noah and between the two lions is the gilded figure of a woman. A richly carved gilded figure of a woman is placed at the extreme bow, like a figurehead, mounted onto a short foredeck. Forward of the cabin sixteen oarsmen are accommodated pulling individually on oars, whilst the barge is steered by the bargemaster situated behind the cabin on a raised deck in the stern. Other fittings include a large richly carved, decorated and gilded coat-of-arms positioned high at the stern and a rudder on which is painted either side a swan. The model is mounted on a pair of wooden crutches and displayed on a seventeenth century wooden baseboard with rounded ends (currently missing),