About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

S is for Scott's Squaddie, Sculptures - Singular!

Standing around the 60-millimeter mark, but with a fusiliers hackle and heavy base pushing him toward the 65/70 area visually, this is a resin sculpt, and you all know my views of resin, but it's only the overblown hype and commonly high prices surrounding what is actually a cheap tech' that really gets my goat.

I can't find much about this firm (Sculptures UK ) on t'Internet, but it seems they may have operated under more than one name, be extant [still] under one of them, be/to have been a Scottish firm, and to have 'flourished' - in the best sense of people who haven't got a clue - around 2011?

There's a Roman legionary on Amazon with a very different 'puddle' or 'mound' base out of stock at the moment, and a - similar to the above - plinthed Black Watch piper, but clicking on the Sculptures UK link takes you to a dead page. And that's as much as I can find with a cursory look, but lots of 'Scottish' hits come back on a Google search which I didn't have time (or the inclination) to investigate further.

Conversely - having fingered Scotland; twice - the box is more reminiscent of the Russian 'art house' metal makers! I'm guessing a tourist/museum gift-shop outfit, whether still with us or - more likely - long-gone?

He's similar to the RHF of my time (they had a white hackle), but is I suspect contemporary with the 2011 date, being a post-amalgamations (and 2nd tranche amalgamations at that) soldier, in the interim combats and newer webbing I don't recognise, with DPM pouches, he's armed with a post H&K updated SA80 - what are they called now; SA99-and-a-bit! Probably the All Points North of Berwick Regiment!

He's slightly stylised, but it helps hide the resin, being sculpted with more traditional smoother surfaces. He's wearing a light belt-order and Tam O'Shanter, so more range-day, NI-patrolling, or gate-duty than either parade or full combat operations.

A close-up, name tags were another thing [unofficially?] adopted in recent years, although - as I drag my sorry arse toward it's 60th with alarming rapidity - I realise my 'recent years' is now, actually, the previous 30!

A nice enough figure depicting a glimpse of a short period in the many changes in the appearance of a British Soldier in his day-to-day uniform, since the monumental change of the 1989 falling of 'The Wall'. Still not as well-tailored as the French, but never as scruffy as the Israelis! Thanks to Peter Evans for putting him in the latest Plunder bags.

3 comments:

Gisby said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gisby said...

Google image search "sculptures UK all handmade" and there are a few pics and listing. No useful info, but more figures....

Hugh Walter said...

Cheers Gisby, I sort of tried that, all I noticed was that apart from the Roman, there seemed to be a lot of Scottish subjects . . . maybe they are waiting for things to pan-out before re-nameing! Sculptures (Hibernia)!!

H