As an addendum to last year's post on
Artillery this is the stuff that's come in, in the last four years, as I said in the first 'round-up' post: I will redo these, or just start an Artillery page one day, but for now, here are a few more!
The upper one is the little cannon claimed by
Kinder collectors as one of theirs (and may well have been in the eggs at some point), but has been available long before, and from various sources as a tourist trinket, key-ring &etc.
The lower gun is (I suspect) an apprentice piece, handmade from high-quality brass-plated steel, with hand-cut wheels and a leather finish to the barrel (lizard or snakeskin by the looks of it), it has a loop for a charm bracelet but is a tad heavy for the purpose. maybe and engineering student's end of year thing, or jewellers first piece...even a bit of 'War Art', but the quality is really too good for that?
The upper shot here is a lead solid
Skybird's howitzer, it makes a super mountain-gun for
Airfix Australians or Gurkha's to drag through Burma...or even to be given to the Japs! The lower shot shows the wooden ones from the sorting post earlier today, in better detail...home-made or austerity/craft 'manufactured'? They elevate by means of a panel-pin pushed through the barrel as trunions.
Above; classic and common 'antiqued' pencil-sharpener gun of the 1800's, issued by several brands over the years and a favourite with museum gift-shops and tourist kiosks the world over.
Below;
Kleeware large-size cannon from the yellow, marbled-plastic, clip-together forts.
The six together with a plastic ship kit Naval gun for scale and (inset) a French penny toy from SR in lead with a heavy wash of pale-grey gloss paint.
Hi Hugh, I think the wooden cannon are from an old ship model, at the auction house I work for we regularly get wooden model ships from the 1920's with guns like these. Home woodworking was a big hobby back in the earlier part of the last century and hobby periodicals/books often carried plans for making model ships like Santa Maria etc.
ReplyDeleteHi Brian...normally I'd agree without question, but the reason for my raising the possibility of a commercial angle is the poor finish! You can see where they've had a single sweep over some quite course sand-paper, and one wonders if a home-maker wouldn't have taken a little more effort? But equally they would have been a 'batch' thing...probably using off-cuts...so you're probably right!
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