CGB is for Cool Glassware Buddy!

Another box-ticker from the Gift Fair at the NEC, and we're looking at glass animals from CGB Giftware, who are clearly some kind of marketing outfit for a cooperative of smaller, artisan makers, with at least two brands visible, Jasmine and Fox Fern.

 

Some of these are so clever, you have to work very fast, with molten glass, to get the techniques to work, and while there's an element of once you've designed one, you can reproduce it quicker and quicker, the nature of artists is that they will constantly have new ideas, so they are always trying new things, I love the giraffe with the bent neck, these two kerthunkersaurs, and, the ducks must be incredibly hard to get 'right'?

F is for Feelin' Feline!

An obvious title, I'm surprised I haven't used before now! We actually had a roundup of cat stuff not that long ago, and while half the stuff in this post is recent, some of it was found elsewhere in the unused archive!

A largish resin lump I picked-up at a charity shop back in '22, made by Sheratt & Simpson, I guess it's from one of those overpriced series of such stuff in jeweller's windows? But it's a reasonable sculpt, and when £20-something becomes 50p or similar, I ponce . . . like a cat!

Boysy-boy eyeing it with a modicum of suspicion! I still miss him every day, his weight on the end of the bed, his little complaints when he thought he ought to have a treat! But I miss both his Mum's too, and that's the burden of getting to this age, dealing with more and more death, in one's life.

Large Japanese blow-mould, marked on the other side with a three-leaved clover mark, and Japan in ink, and moulded on the body.

This is a modern set from Shing Hing, the people who brought a four-nation 'army man' tub to Smyths a few years ago. There's a lack of imagination in the decoration, but otherwise they are reasonable sculpts for a rack-toy type thing.

Three from Schliech, we looked at five back in October and I think two are duplicates, but the Egyptian-looking one is a definite paint variant, and the long-haired Persian is a new addition.

They are no better as cat's, than they were as dog's, who buys this shit?

Shelfied in Home Bargains.

Oh . . . I do! I actually grabbed these at Waterloo yesterday, a series of mini-adventures I could have done without - Travellers closing Charing Cross, football hooligans, and cancelled trains - led to my browsing the 'boutiques' on the new mezzanine, and I thought these were particularly stupid! The cord already hangs over the side of the vessel, how is a cat's tail going to make any difference, or improve things, one iota?

I found they preferred to sniff the fumes of sloe gin!

What? It's Christmas! 

N is for Not Serious!

A few more toy or figure related funnies, and a couple of cats!

 

I believe this is genuine? But not necessarily a retail thing?

 

Ours were old, fat, bald and tattooed, with their brassy tarts holding the ladders!

 

Sigh!

 

Heehee!

 

Rubber jigglers!

 

Let's make death fun! And phallic!

AI from a couple of years ago - it was poor!

Check-out the white lines, crushed cars and dwarf in a pram! 

 

Real, but I don't know which model village?

P is for Philanthropic Polymer Pile

I haven't been as quick or often through the Charity Shops, this last eighteen months or so, work commitments, eBay bottom-feeders and a couple of store closures making it a less lucrative quest these days, but I did manage two quick tours of Farnham and Fleet's charity shops last week, while I had some time off, and I found these.

 

This was a quick round-up in Fleet

 

Box tickers for the tubs of generic play-set accessories, but also a new figure, funny how, despite forty-odd serious years of this, there's still new figures, in every bunch of plunder, every donantion, even a random bag of charity stuff! Jame's Opie always asks - primarily of lead hollow-casts and solids - how many figures (actual pose mouldings/sculpting) have there been, and the answer, from where I'm sitting, is millions - one is including copies and colour or paint variations.

 

A couple of slip-cast kittens, with slightly 'Disney' or 'doe eyes', but a rather interesting glaze technique, I thought? And mostly because they are often in mixed lots of cats, or pets, I now have quite a side-collection of china, bisque or chalkware cats. These are priced 3/6 each (three shillings and sixpence, 42 old pence, about 16p in new money, at the time?).

 

A pair of Toy Major Dino's.

 

A right old mix here, with the Ray marked Smartstudy and Viacom 2021, I assume not a Finding Nemo thing, but some other franchise, maybe Baby Shark?

 

And then, the next day - to Farnham!

 

Given the cost of these new, or 2nd-hand with box, I'm guessing a tenner for the three, while a swallow, was also the best I was going to get for what, to me, are box-tickers, to compare with plastics in the future? Not 'Britians' but W'britian from the US.

 

Simply marked 'China' and probably from some toob, or tub type thing, but a nice sample of ocean or shore-dwelling mammals, from the left; a Sea-lion, Mantee, Seal and Walrus.

 

It's Christmas! A nicely executed bit of poured-resin, possibly from Italy, but I don't know, as they are unmarked where visible, and have green-baize discs on their undersides, hiding any clues which might be there?

S is for Sifcon International / SiL Interiors . . .

. . . and Temerity Jones, and if there really is someone called Temerity, I hope they punished their parents somehow! Another stand which caught my eye at Birmingham, back in February, was the Sifcon International / SiL Interiors / Temerity Jones stand, which was more about cats, than anything else, but cats, or big cats, as tree-hangers, and nutcracker tree-hangers at that, were an absolute for getting the camera out!

 

They appear to be pressed copper or, more likely brass-sheet (although they could just be edged-card?), litho-printed with a Victorian or early Edwardian'esque artwork, which is then given a deep domed lacquer effect coating, which looks like clear enamel glaze, but is probably a two-part epoxy polymer. Available as standees in two sizes, along with smaller tree-hangers, there were domestic animals, and four of the 'big five' wild animals - no elephant!

 

The nutcracker designs - as you can see - are carried over to soft furnishing, cheeseboards, bottle gift-boxes, jars, mugs, and no doubt, if they prove successful, other items of interior decor? Sadly I haven't seen them about, as I'd get both the smaller cats, for the tree!

B is for Benevolent Buys - 2 of 3

This first shot was a bunch of things from a charity shop in Cranleigh, same visit as the Post Office and includes the deer we've already seen (I should pop over there again, it was a while ago!), while the others are more recent, but a few interesting things?

 

A ceramic cat fairing, I've picked-up so many of these I wonder if I shouldn't do the 'Shire Album'! In point of fact, the 'proper' ones have been done, and most of the ones I've picked-up over the years, are the cheap, unrated/discounted (by the serious/dedicated collectors) copies, or Japanese imports, so that's not a viable idea! I'll do a page here one day!

 

A resin otter and Phidal Marvel or DC character, a capsule-toy dinosaur, distributor obscured, the glass vitrine deer we saw the other day, two teddy bears, one generic, the other from the Noddy set which is slowly growing, along with an inclusion bouncy-ball.

 

That inclusion; it seems to be a cake decoration, with icing spike!

 

Undersides of the two bears, one in plastic and marked 'Noddy Subsidiary, Empire Made' with code and date (no, I can't read them either!), while the generic, probably also a cake decoration is chalkware, made of a plaster composition.

 

 

This was one of those strange moments of serendipity bordering on synergy, I'd seen the [marked] Peter Fagan (which is why I could 'believe' earlier today!) in Blue Cross, and left it as a bit daft, then went next door to the DEBRA shop and found the 'Sitting Pretty' trio from The Leonardo Collection (real high-street jewellers fare from Lesser & Pavey), so, it seemed dafter to not grab the one, and wizz back next-door for the other! Kittens . . . in satchels . . . on the Internet!

 

1987 for the smaller, 1998 for the larger, and I'm guessing, given some cats' love of bags, that this is a common trope among these ornamental 'collectable' sets of cats, so we may find more!

 

This came with one or other of the above purchases, and I don't think it's Jade, but one of the many false Jades which can be marbles, or quartzes/quartzites, maybe a greenish onyx? There is a sub-collection of reptiles in a half-shell, which we haven't really looked-at yet, but one day!

 

And there is another one or two of this type there, as they are always popular tourist mementos (there are elephants too, and we've seen a lizard here, I think), things made of the local stone, are forever anchored in where they came from, if you know what I mean? Much nicer than a poured-resin, puffin, fridge magnet with Camber Sands marker-penned on it!

B is for Benevolent Buys - 1 of 3

Clearing out a folder of Charity Shop purchases which seem to have escaped some of the other Charity Shop purchase posts over recent months, and nothing exciting here, but all grist to the mill!

 

Actually, from the tail-end of '24, and I can't remember where, a resin jobbie of the sort that fills and has filled window-space in high-street jewellery chains for decades now, it was in good-nick, and pennies to charity, it goes in the box of such stuff!

 

I think this and the next two were from a rare trip to Camberley, I undertook back in February, looking for something else, but it might have just got shot with the others, but be an earlier find in - probably - the Blue Cross shop in Fleet?

 

A couple of the expanded-polystyrene glider novelties, we've seen before here, and of which two more are in the queue, this pair marked-up to Henbrandt, but likely to be the same poorly printed ones we saw a while back in various packagings.

 

Three Disney Princesses, these were definitely from a large basket of such stuff, in a Charity Shop in Camberley, obviously ex-shop, or other 'stock' (NOS in feebleBay parlance), and probably from capsule dispensers of some kind, but could be off a Disney Store hook-tree?

 

While I vaguely remember these, as larger rope/string-dolls, enjoying a brief 'craze' of popularity back in the 1990's (?) As they came with the above Princesses, in a similar quantity, capsule stock, or something more independent is the likelier for both, than the Disney Stores thought, but never rule out what you can't disprove!

 

Two semi-deforms from a while ago, probably the DEBRA shop in Fleet, more Fortnite franchised stuff, and with quite a bit of dust on them, some age, a few years on a shelf at least, rather like the Skibidi Toilet stuff, a youth-culture which has grown, almost organically, away from the figure collection hobby.

 

They look like the kind of quite expensive stuff you find in those funny little t-shirt/gaming/metal 'head' shops in the quieter corners of shopping malls? But as cheap buys in a charity shop, provide 'reference samples' I'm in no hurry to add to.

 

Another Wimsey from Wade on the right, we've seen the one playing with a ball of wool before, but this one looks like it's foil, waiting a chance to grab the ball! On the left two resin, cartoon cats, with kittens, from crafty/gifty shops rather than jewellers I suspect, but maybe both sources? And I believe they are Peter Fagan sculpts from Scotland.