How they come in!
. . . I got a Tom the Piper's Son figure at
the last Sandown Park show (next one's only two weeks away), and had totally forgotten
when buying it that I already had one!
Fortunately, the one I had has the other piglet!
So now I have a small convoy (or patrol?) of Tom's stealing pigs, with the new
on having a piglet looking to the left (looking - in fact - rather surprised at
its predicament; it has to be said!), while the older one has a piglet looking
forwards.
The third piglet I'm not sure about, it's
overall quality and finish is just a cut above the normal production of Gem/Festival, and I'm not convinced it's
Gem at all, it's even finer than the
other farm animals, it's feet-bottoms are neatly flat to the same plane.
I have been assured by a collector of some
repute whom I respect greatly for his knowledge, particularly of animals, that
it is Gem and it's also in the PW
Special on Gem, as Gem, so I've put it in the Gem box, but with a note stubbornly
stating I'm not 100% convinced!
It's hard to explain, but the quality of
the sculpt is just way above the normal output of Mr. Musgrave, it's more
'manufactured' or engineered than the other production; comparing the piglet to
the other two is like comparing a Marx
54mm GI with a Gem snowman, the
etching is fine-lined and the surface smooth against the rougher, hand-finished
effect of the other two . . . if that makes sense! Anyway; I'm giving it a big
question-mark until I know the context that lead to its being voted Gem!
Arguing against myself, the candle-holders
of Festival, particularly the racing
cars have similar high production-values, and the later Festival-for-Culpitts
slot-together Santa is equally commercial, so maybe this larger piglet is from
that 'tail-end' era?
I think I have referred to these several
times while looking at other stuff, or even smaller numbers of these? The A1 - Spaceman from Gem, who I've always thought of as a spacewoman, and the fact that
the catalogue says otherwise won't stop me thinking of 'her' as a space-babe!
Now, I think the order of the above is two Gem-for-Culpitt/s on the left (chalky, marbled, more paint - black lead in
icing . . . Mummmm . . . Nom-nom-Nomnivore!), two Culpitts under licence from Gem
(minimal paint, shiny ethylene, less shrinkage) in the middle and a Culpitt copy (with or without George's
permission) on the right?
It must be said that there are size
variations of other Gemodels stuff
though, so they may all be from the one place. But I suspect it was reduced in
the 1970's to run-through their (Culpitt's)
packing-line and fit their new plastic counter-stock display units and
revolving catering-shop dispensers; both of which had small compartments.
Most of the height loss has been achieved
by removing the middle-depth of the base, but deeper sculpting of the harness
and air-lines, along with feet further apart (and a saggy bottom!) suggest a
copy rather than a pantograph or a chop to the tool.
That the copy is so similar would suggest
it was with Musgrave's knowledge, if not involvement.
The fact that they all look slightly
different sizes in the first shot is down to slight curvature away from the
blue figure caused by holding the camera too close and at a slight angle.
3 comments:
Cheers Hugh! I adore the Gemodels A-1 spacepersons and am ardently of the mind that they depict female forms (hips like that ...) though marketing them as "spacemen" may have been judged more in step with 1960s expectations of gender roles. I have examples of the "taller base" opaque half-painted figures as well as the "flatter base" waxier cake topper copies and looking into the change to the base is what led me here. Is there a year to fix on when they first appeared? and were all of them produced in the UK??
SN aka ST
As is often the Way ST, it's not too clear, but yes, as far as I know they are all UK production, but Hong Kong may have had a stab, I've not found one yet, if they did it would likely be polystyrene hard plastic in an off-white, with painted highlights?
George Musgrave was primarily a freelance sculptor, Gem was his little baby, part try-out, part retirement savings-bank (I suspect), but once he's been pulled-in by Culpitt, not all was well, and at least one of the variants will be a spare/duplicate mould given to Culpitt who had their own fabricator, but which one?
And then there's Festival!
H
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