G is for Grendon Underwood . . .

. . . a place I actually know quite well, and it's a half-horse hamlet, which in the 1960's would have quite literally been in the middle of nowhere, like all those villages in the greenery between London and Birmingham!

 

I'm absolutely positive this set, or one very similar from the same maker has been shown on the blog already, as an 'unknown', but I just can't find it anywhere, but neither is it waiting to go, in Picasa, so I don't know?

Grendon Valley Toys from Ornamental Alloys, sounds grand, and it gets two new entries in the Tag List, but I suspect it was a bloke in a shed, with his mate who had a mate who could print stuff?!! I may be totally wrong, but I have a vision of pots of lead going soft over a camping stove, while the wife spends her Sunday afternoons painting tigers!

 

I've definitely shot a similar set (it might have been five animals and no natives, though?), and I'm sure I blurbed it with the usual 'probably from Schneider moulds, or those supplied by Agasee, or someone like that, commercially sold as a sideline, maybe at Christmastime?

 

Anyway, the whole point was to ID the previous set, which I can't find, so it is what it is; a minor-make, producing a commercial product from home-casting moulds, in the years immediately after WWII, I would imagine? Thanks to Mercator Trading for letting me shoot it (the original, and missing one).

 

Added 12-03-2024 - While thanks are due to David Fisher, who let me shoot this one on his stall the other day.