Do you remember this image, from one of the earlier donations from Chris Smith;
A resinated slate (or coal?) lady on the left, what turned out to be
Tringa Toys, via
Toyway in the middle, and a
Britains Highland Piper, trapped in a bottle. At the time I said of the right-hand item:
"The final piece is very interesting,
clearly a Scott's tourist thing, he is a HK-production Britains Herald piper, held on a cork plinth with a piece of
textured green Plasticine . . . and a
blob of glue? The tartan band, other than hammering-home the Scottish nature of
the item, is probably hiding a clever join at the base of the bottle, or a
not-so-clever join bodged with glue?"
And, a few months later, I found marked items on feebleBay, of a similar nature, employing the same tartan ribbon, which have been in Picasa for a few years, waiting for the right moment to show, which following a purchase at Sandown four weeks ago, is now!
Revealing themselves to have been entrapped by a
Northfield Products of Edinburg, I fear they are a little disingenuous as to their London design or Hong Kong manufacture! The contents have actually broken loose, and slide up and down, but you can see how the figures are landscaped onto a piece of hardboard, with green
Plasticine, and shunted in from the wide end, before the join is hidden with the tartan tape!
My hand looks strangely stunted in that third shot, I can assure you, I currently have perfectly normal hands, and will blame foreshortening, or AI? . . . buzzztt . . . pling! "Northfield Products refers to several different businesses, most prominently Northfield Farm, known for high-welfare free-range pork, beef, and lamb sold online and at markets like Borough Market; Northfield Furniture, offering handcrafted wooden items like toilet seats and trays; and Northfield Freezing Systems, an industrial brand by JBT Corporation for large-scale food processing. Other mentions include school uniforms and even a shoe model."
This is a wind-up music box, with the mechanism hidden in a tartan gift-box, and the same bottle as the loose one, Chris sent to the Blog. It also has the
Frea Scotland (from Scotland) sticker, which is missing on the new, larger band-bottle from Sandown's show.
And the shipping box the larger bottle came in, this also has the sticker. Now the next question, because there's always a next question, is: were there earlier ones which used the better quality, UK-made,
Herald figures? Anyway, for now, that's another one put to bed -
Northfield Products, purveyors of quality tat, to the passing tourist trade!
And I bet there are other Northfield items, you could probably build a nice little niche display or cameo collection of them?
As we're doing an 'Answer Time', here's confirmation, via a couple of dodgy colour scans of B&W copies, of the earlier (pre-
RHA figure)
Tringa line-up of 90mm figures, sold through
Toyway, and also aimed squarely at the tourist trade.
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