W is for Well, Well, Well . . .

I've had a lazy few days this week - as far as the Blogging goes, I've been busy doing other things, but it means the post pencilled-in for today probably won't happen 'till Monday (it's Friday in real time!), but I have got a new queue formed, just not finished sorting out the images or texting them up with blurb!

So this is a quickie that was ready to go, and Monday's will post later in the day than usual, if at all!

You see an awful lot of this stuff, there was David Winter (was it? John Winter?) the local lot over Alton way with their Cotswold bollocks, while these Lilliput Lane things turn up all the time, this was £1.45p in a charity shop, a bit pricey really; for a charity shop (as far as my purchasing habits go!) but with no chips (common with this stuff) I picked it up; the size helped.

It's funny, I'd been looking in a modern 'chain' jeweller's window, a few minutes earlier, at a bunch of glittery, enamelled animals and thinking "All these will be in charity shops in a year or two for two-quid-ninety-nine!" They were so heavily decorated it was hard to tell if the base medium was metal, ceramic, poured resin like this well, or an injected polymer.

As a species we have become conditioned to take our pick from a monumental pile of shite, and there's no stopping us. We toy collectors justify our activities with the thoughts that A) we are saving 'old' things, B) it feeds our need to hunt, C) presses a nostalgia button and that D) any shite we pick-up along the way is for completion - to tell the whole story, or for a 'project'; but I can see no similar excuses justifying the collecting of resin blobs made yesterday . . . unless they are pirates in plaster-blocks - of course!

But who wants to cover a mantle-piece or the glass shelves of a flat-packed 'shrank' in resin blobs of fictional architecture, or simplified, cleaned-up, examples of real, old buildings? Which - resultant collection - represents no real place or community known to man. This lump was probably fifteen or twenty-quid when new, priced as an 'entry-level' piece to draw in new collectors, the big pieces can be hundreds of pounds!

Don't get me wrong, I can see the justification for a touristy Shakespeare's cottage or White Tower model, but a collection of buildings you've never been to and mostly can't ever visit?

Poured resin is the simplest and cheapest of technologies, and these buildings are modelled not with skill, but practised technique; brick-work and tile work is hinted at with no attendance to scale, and the decoration is likewise technique-driven (washes and dry-brushing) rather than artistic; bright, blemish-free colours leaving the subjects looking like illustrations from a kid's storybook, brought to life! Rose bushes don’t look like that, a stand of lupins is half dead-petal brown!

And of-course the resultant villagey-townscapey thing you end up with on your shelf of treasures has no constant scale, and few small details! However, for war-gamers the larger (in 'scale') buildings can be ideal for 10mm gaming, the smaller for 15mm gaming, while the few pieces of street furniture - the 'small pieces' mentioned just now - can be suitable for 20/25mm gaming.

This is such a piece - with the bucket being a large water bucket in 20mm or smaller horse-feed/watering-bucket in 25 or 28mm?

Die you Britisher devils!

Donner und blitzen!

Achtung; Spitfire!

Gott in Himmel -Teufuell!

Englander Schwinehund!

Mine Beutelmaus hat verstopfung!

Crappy resin well -

WELL-BRILLIANT!