But these . . .
. .
. never seen them before, may never see them again! Best thing from Sandown,
best thing this year - so far, two cool for dance school! **
What'der-yer recon? Balkans? Removed from
some larger piece of tourist tat like a cuckoo clock? Cake decorations?
Presumably, back in the days before globalisation, there were things like
'local' cake decorations? Wedding-cake? They could be a wedding party?
They are free-standing, but with a tendency
to fall backwards and note that there is damage to a foot at either end, so they may
have been removed from something which might have been a simple base, a
complicated plinth or some household object? They could be the handle of the
lid of a cheap butter-dish, with the other figures from a matching cruet set or
sugar bowl or something!
We know a lot about UK, US and Euro toys, have
learnt a lot about Aussie and NZ makers form the ACOTS guys and are now getting
quite a bit on the Soviet bloc's commoner stuff, but there's a whole world out
there and we know little about most of it, we don't even know what happened to Tatra's moulds after they went to Africa,
probably in the 21st century!
These could be from the 'Stans, from the Balkans
proper, South to one of the former Yugoslav republics, North to Bulgaria, West
to Greece, are they Maltese or Cypriot (which half?!), the hats are quite
Cossack-looking, black rather than red and softer outlines than true fez's (so
I've ruled out Turkey arbitrarily!) which could take us up to the steppes of
the Urals?
Bagpipes! Now we're in Syria or the Levant!
Yeh - Scotii, you got them from the Picts who got them from the Legions, the
little baby Jesus [probably] invented them two-hundred years before the Picts stopped
painting each other blue like monkey's arses for long-enough to kill some Romans
and take their wheezing-cat bags, you just added some notes and a fancy tartan cover!
Joking apart, they have a lot in common
with the Female Italian from Codec / Commonwealth
/ Sanitarium and the male Turk from Sanitarium
in the various World Doll/World Dancer ranges, so maybe Turkey after all! The
apron and simplified skirt-stripes could place the women nicely in Skutari,
Albania?
Researching this costume stuff - as I've
discovered before - is not made easier by the fact that fifteen or twenty of
the modern states/countries the figures may be from were in three empires in
1900; Ottoman 'European Turkey', Austro-Hungary and Imperial Russia.
The bag-piper has a wire-nail trumpet, but
a plastic finger-whistle-mouthpiece-thing and is a single moulding with the nail
presumably set into a jig in the tool before each shot. The brown 'worms' on
him and the figure below were perished rubber-bands, used to hold them all
together at some point in the past - let's hear it for click-shut bags.
All the figures are a creamy-white or
neutral plastic, definitely polystyrene (as I mended some damage to the
line-up) and are all-over painted in at least 12 colours - all of which are on
the seven-figure line-up; flesh, pink, red, blue, pea-green, dark-green,
yellow, tan, brown, black, white and gold.
These two however only add to the mystery,
they initially looked as if their arms had been broken off, but close-ups show
that they are just formed flatter (and possibly - further glue-melted) and with
the deliberate hollow formed in the centre of their chest they seem to have
been removed from something large; a base-drum, a May-pole, a dancing partner,
a circus act . . . who knows?
Someone does - somewhere! They had to be informally
discussed, formally planned, designed, funded, ordered, master-sculptured,
pantographed, cleaned-up, test-shot, manufactured, packed, wholesale-marketed, shipped,
retail-advertised, sold, used, discarded, found, sold-again and moved to
Surrey, over maybe a 30/50 year period? Somewhere; someone knows all about
them!
You want to know more about Cherilea Wild West? Google them!
You want to know more about these? Tough!
---------------------------------------------
* With apologies to the Beastie Boys!
** Actually it's a toss-up between these
and the whale, as Balkan dancers can't have a fair fight with a whale, it'll
have to be a draw for now! Look out for best ever non-board game game . . .
with pigs . . . ever; coming soon!
And many thanks to Adrian Little who as
good as gave me the bag of bits which contained both these figures and the
whale!
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