P is for Postponed Posts, Poultry and Pottering About!

Right, real life is going to make increasing in-roads for a while, it won't stop me posting, but some of the stuff penciled in for December will probably slide into the new year, other stuff won't happen and I'll pick at what's hanging around here half-done!

It's a pain, yet I can hardly claim 2020's been a vintage year, but I was hoping after a slow late-summer/autumn to pull a few stops out at the end; that probably won't happen now. A joint 'season' with Brain B has almost certainly gone for a Burton's, but I'll try to work at it for January, a space mini-season with another contributor will probably now be a single follow-up and plans for Santa's & Snowmen will wait for next year, but I have some Nativity in the can, which I'll try to get finished in the moments available!

I think I've mentioned before that increasingly I'm going for thematic/subject matter sorting of the collection, rather than maker/scale, and to that end one of the early subjects was the whole bird-world and poultry sector!

These are all the recent acquisitions (last 9-months or so), and some will have been seen before in H is for . . . 's, but getting them together to take to the relevant boxes in the loft was an excuse for another picture!

Clockwise in a spiral from the top left we have; a terracotta owl ornament, a probably French key-ring (wine and cockerels? It's not Barnsley!), a modern China goose in PVC, crappy HK turkey, British duck (Britains or Hillco? Another day!), Kinder flamingo, Crescent family group, a very-solid piece of - possibly cast iron - metal duck (modern), then a blow-moulded swan (probably from a Hong Kong doll's set), larger blow-moulded novelty duck, a green bird which could be an Indian Runner duck or a stretching goose, but is - I think - supposed to be a penguin and finally a novelty 'rubber ducky' in blue, probably a cracker or gum-ball capsule machine prise, also blow-moulded.

I'm actually building quite a group of those miniaturised bath-ducks! They were/are - along with swan sets -  a popular novelty and I've seen carded 'families' in different sizes.

With them were these wooden flats (from Peter Evans I think?) which I left in the bag for a reason, as I was pretty sure I'd another one!

As I was taking them up, I found another, a rather nice cockerel who could be that French/Portuguese family of PVC products being the same stiff material, but from the eyes I think he is a newer cartoon character by someone like Phidal?

When I took them up, I found the similar pickings from last year/early this year were sat on top of the stack waiting the 'full-sort', which was probably when I got the idea for this thematic post! And there was the other wooden flat!

Snaking down we have a pair of modern Chinese ducks, one large one small; we've seen these before, both from my collection and a contributor and they are always well painted - like owls, there is a sub-hobby who only collect these ornamental ducks.

The standing mallard-type is ceramic and probably a fair-ground prize or 'fairing', below him another well painted model of a goose (or non-UK-native swan?), another ceramic owl, a chewed 'chook', two more duckies, one a pink blow-mould, the other a 'proper' rubber duck with squeaker and key-chain hook and finally a moulten-glass sculpture which may be a duck with a broken upper beak, or some kind of tropical toucan thing? Always listed by hopeful evilBayers as Murano, they rarely are and I tend to pick them up in Charity shops for 50p

"Revenge of the Giant Chickens! Opens Bank-Holiday Monday, in a theatre near you! Be amazed, be shocked, and be sure to buy a choc-ice during the intermission!"

Quickly brought together, these are from larger Erzgebirge-style sets, and similar stuff exists in most countries, but from her garb I suspect some Eastern import, probably between the wars . . . Poland or Czechoslovakia?

I think I may have other animals (pigs/sheep) from the same set somewhere, and you do see them in rummage-trays at the 'London'  toy soldier shows in among the ratted hollow-cast, we imported a lot of Christmas decorations from both countries in that period, and we seem to have shipped-in a few of these!