Silent companions

In the Long Gallery at Chirk Castle, two small, pale children stand coyly either side of the carved Rococo chimneypiece. The boy wears a black hat and carries a hobby horse stick in one hand, while the girl has a lace-edged apron and holds a basket of apples and walnuts on her slender arm. They’re undeniably disturbing – life-size and life-like, but with a cold look in their blank, staring eyes. Despite their eerie, almost ghostly quality, decorative cut-out figures like these Dutch examples (c1650–1699) known as ‘dummy boards’ haunt stately homes up and down