Following Queen Victoria's death in 1901 a collection of fourteen marble hands and feet, facsimiles of the infant limbs of her children, was sent from her private apartments at Buckingham Palace to be kept at Osborne. These remarkable objects were presented on crimson velvet cushions (in some cases marble slabs) and kept under glass domes to preserve the pristine whiteness of the marble. They are another manifestation of the Queen's desire to capture fleeting likenesses and souvenirs of her children as they grew, whether by means of miniature portraits or jewellery fashioned out of milk teeth. Although hands and feet are often the features that mothers remember of their babies, and firms exist even today to offer casts, Queen Victoria seems to have favoured marble replicas as providing the most faithful souvenirs. It may have been on her recommendation that the otherwise completely unrecorded Abraham Kent made a marble hand of Lady Constance Leveson- Gower for her mother, the Duchess of Sutherland, the Mistress of the Robes, in March 1846. Each of the marble limbs was carved on the basis of a cast, made from moulds in plaster of Paris. In her letter to the Duchess of Sutherland the Queen mentioned that Kent had taken moulds of one of the Princess Royal's hands but would have to do the other on a separate occasion, as this could only be done while she was asleep. Abraham Kent was clearly a craftsman of great skill. He may have been an assistant in the studio of a better-known sculptor, here allowed to work on his own account. In 1843 he made a marble hand of the Queen herself, for presentation to Prince Albert on the Queen's birthday, 24 May. Text from Victoria & Albert: Art & Love.