Miniature Hugh-Mans! Only an overview, visually, because all my existing collection, including the stuff that was here (or round the corner now!) in the attic, was combined and sent to storage a year or so ago! Also it was damaged in the 2007 summer-floods, so is a bit depressing, although it's mostly survived, it lost it's pristineness!
But both Adrian Little And Jon Attwood have between them found all the following, so we can have a half-decent look at their output, and the sort of revelation following, so many thanks to both of them.
The box isn't quite as bad as it looks here, enhancing the contrast so you could more-easily read the information on the labels has resulted in something which looks like a bloodstained artefact recovered from a murder victim in Midsomer or some New England coastal community!
Five shillings was a lot of money back in the day, and while these are believed to have been on sale from the war or soon after the end of it, they wouldn't have been that affordable, to the average buyer, even in the 1960's or 70's, more of a luxury, or something architects could put on the bill?
They are however (left and upper shots) exquisitely painted, compared to their J&L Randall Merit counterparts or Wardie Mastermodel clones. And I've just chosen my words very carefully, following what's come to light just in the last few weeks as a result of the Minikin find AND re-reading the Brookes book on Kemlows.
Before I continue - the lady in a pink top and grey skirt (top right) fixing her hair in a compact-mirror is an interloper, I'm not sure whose figure she is, perhaps Merten? I suspect the figures in the lower image are early Merit, they are quite well painted, but heavier sculpts, and brighter colours on pink plastic.
But, it seems the original story, which I got from the Brookes' at the lovely exhibition open-days held in Alresford, Hampshire by Bob Leggett, which was that Merit had got the tooling when BJ Ward went bust, and that the workers being laid-off without pay had carried them 'over the road' to Randall's, was in fact, a tad fanciful.
Having said that, I cast no aspersions, the story told, was made clear to be hearsay, and was some ten-years before the book was ready, so before the Brookes were even talking to Stephen Lowe (of the Kemlows family), but reading how Collis Plastics first played a roll in, and were later bought by Kemlows (the firm behind the production of Mastermodels), has made it all clear.
Not clear here - should have used a ruler like some over-efficient evilBayer - but these are the smaller TT-gauge, in the master collection I know I also have the larger O-gauge, both unpainted and painted, home and factory.
The clarity came in realising that there is NO crossover in poses, to/from Slaters and Minikins, and that therefore BJ Ward (who carried most of the poses of both!), knowingly, or unknowingly (through his tool/pattern maker Collis) copied, cloned or pirated BOTH firms, to produce the figures, for his otherwise pretty unique range of die-cast, tin, whitemetal, wire and wooden railway accessories. Because both firms were active, earlier than Ward's enterprise!
And that's enough for now, as we are going to be looking briefly at both Mastermodels and Merit in the next few days/week or so, and can polish-off the rest then, as it's all in the Kemlows book, sort of. Suffice to say, we have to believe, that for whatever reason, Slater's (a Northern-based firm) must have got their tooling from the early Collis Plastics just North of London?
A flat wagon courtesy of Jon, I may have one or two of these horse-drawn vehicles in the master collection, if so, and because they will be in flood damaged packaging, I will build them as a future project one day!
From the Carriage Foundation;
"Dog carts were so named because they were originally used for carrying sporting dogs in the boot, some would have louvred sides which provided ventilation. First built at the beginning of the 19th century as two-wheeled vehicles, they were later built with four wheels. They carried four passengers sitting in pairs, back to back, and were so useful for all country pursuits that they were found in every country house and used well into the motor age, many of the later examples never being used for the purpose for which they were originally designed."
G.N. Slater & son of Cheshire is a very significant company in railway modelling (and plastics in general). He is generally credited with inventing a type of plastic known as Plastikard, a very white substance which takes paint well. The score and snap properties of the sheet material made it ideal for structure modelling. At the time (late 40s early 50s) it was a breakthrough in plastics technology, being much more stable than the polythene or resin based materials available at the time. It has similar properties to ABS, which it may be the direct ancestor of.
ReplyDeleteMr Slater was well known at model railway exhibitions for decades, he would have a demonstration stall were he showed off the properties of his materials, all whilst chain smoking over an open bottle of solvent!
He was a member of META (Model Engineers Trade Association) which included most of the big names in the hobby, significantly, Ward, Collis, Kemlow and Randalls were not META members, their copying of Slaters figures is likely the reason that they were not part of the trade association. META companies had preferential advertising and distribution arrangements that would have been a boon to the companies in question.
Some 50s Slaters ads include the text 'The original, accept no imitations'
A direct dig at the wardie range?
J
Cheers Jon, it's pure polystyrene, and I never understood how Plastruct (crappy ABS) which was a nightmare to glue, became more popular? Then Evergreen blew them both away with 'styrene, and Plastruct changed-over . . . late 1990's?
ReplyDeleteIn the collection I have some very interesting bits from Slaters, like a set of window-framing spars, like T-section Evergreen, but cut up into literally hundreds of little pieces, so you can build greenhouses, cold-frames or actual windows in scratch-build dwellings!
H