H is for Holtzstoff

It's a poor pun, but there are six of these posts, so 'any port on a storm'! In this post we're looking at the trees and fences from the Dusyma sample case sent to the blog by Joe Walton from the 'States.

Dark green trees, both fluffy (deciduous?) and evergreen firs, and a length of hedging or shrub which seems to have lost its bases. The bases are a two-ply or 'three-mil' plywood and are stained, against the full painting of the trees themselves - the same is true of the figures we will be looking at.

I quite like the kink in the trunk of the deciduous or 'broadleaved' tree, most of these erzgebirge trees have - traditionally - an axis of symmetry, while other details are the brown trunks, 2nd green tufts at ground level and additional bases, both usually lacking in these types.

Light green stuff; no firs, but solid elm/oak/chestnut types, along with longer lengths of hedge in two designs and an immigrant shrub from the compartment next-door! Looking like they were made yesterday, it's only the accrued dust down the compartment-edge which hints at the true age of this case and its contents.

Like most of the stuff in this set, these are all produced on the bread-slice principle we looked at here at Small Scale World years ago and which is still used by erzgebirge (and Bavarian, Tyrolean, Baden Württemberger, Black Forest . . . ) makers today.

Indeed ignoring the Dubai thing, Dusyma are based near Stuttgart, but I can never remember if Stuttgart is in Baden Württemberg or Baden-Baden - very important if you live there, I'm sure - no 'Hampshire Hog' wants to be labeled a Surreyman, they're all posh and 'up' themselves!

More hedges in dark green are in with the farm fencing. There is also a packet of picket-fencing (there's a silly rhyme in there somewhere!), which is shown originally being in-with the train, one wonders if someone in the factory said to the salesman "Dude, you haven't got any picket fence, we’ve already packed them, here; you better take a pack" (except - in German) before sticking a 'finished' product in the case?

More likely he deliberately carried it to show a sample of the packaging available to the shopkeepers/buyers, as they played with carefully studied everything else!

60-65mm is quite large for these types, which part-explains the extra colours and the bases, they will need something to hold them upright on runs or carpets, and something to break-up what whould otherwise be a large piece of green!

Also; you can see in the reflected flash-light, on the deciduous tree, how crudely or pooly-finished these are; modern examples, pre-war examples . . . and the train well see in a later set, are much better finished with a smooth, even coating, the inference being austerity conditions and/or shortages, in the factory.