C is for Ceremonial Roundup!

I picked up and shot these first two the other day, and thought it was a good excuse to get a few of the 'odds & sods' images out of the Ceremonial folder and share them with the Loyal Readers, no particular theme, but I left the Spanish, the Cossacks, the Majorettes and others in the folder, so we're looking at UK production of UK figures, even if some came from Holland!

 

So these are the new additions, a second sample of the maybe BR Moulding/maybe Hilco kneeling infantryman of the Victorian era, I'm not sure if it was in the BR mould-list? And a Sacul drummer, the Sacul sample is growing slowly, a few others have come in, and I am looking forwards to shooting them all together!

This was sent by a loyal reader back in 2021, during a conversation about either Sacul, or unknown guardsmen, which I was thinking were from the Crescent sculpt, because of the epaulettes, but as pointed out it's the Sacul moulding.

 

And, further, the correspondent pointed out that the smaller drummer (second from the left) was probably also Sacul, issued as a drummer boy? The unknown is next and another probably Sacul forth, with the common Sacul varient on the left. And, if I recall the conversation correctly, the feeling was that all four were probably Scaul, with the [3rd] nylon'y one being maybe a late issue, early 1970's?

 

These were all sent to the Blog by Theo van der Werden from the Netherlands, back in 2018, again as part of a conversation on his - then - recent purchases, and because I'd covered most of them, I sort of filed them, with a bunch of other stuff, anyway here they are, three Britains 54mm and some nice examples of Cherilea 60mm types.

 

I really like the lifeguard (upper pair in middle image), he's a very unusual toy soldier, being that sort of late Georgian/early Victorian uniform.

 

We've seen better here in the past, but they came in with some mixed lot, or another, and the shot shows the three poses of Gemodels in the less common Horse Guard's blue colourway, which happens to be my favourite! Note also the two distinct shades of blue plastic.

Having mentioned BR, these are now known to have been issued as part of their home-moulding exercise, and here are three very different treatments of the same pose, with a hard 'styrene on the left, odd-coloured, unpainted polyethylene in the middle, and a marbled pinkish one on the right!

 

Finally, also a bit tatty and from some bulk lot, are these; four Herald and a Zang original (larger figure to the right) of the highland infantryman of the late Victorian era, just before the switch to khaki uniforms. The four on the left are not rare, and I may well repaint them one day, if I ever pick up that eye-glass prescription!

 

While (finally finally!) this is a 'seen elsewhere' shot from the archive (and from another folder, 2008) and shows what other bugger's can achieve with a bit of paint on these figures, four of the later Herald in a variety of late 19thC/colonial era uniforms, original on the right. It may have been on the Blog before?

 

There's lots of this kind of stuff in about 30 folders, and I'll try to get some more cleared in the run-up to Christmas, many thanks to Theo and Anon for the images indicated above.

B is for Big Box! One of Two

I can't believe it's nearly forty days since I covered Jon Attwood's smaller of two parcels? The time just flies at 'our' age! Not that I can be accused of tardiness, or idleness; there have been 70-odd posts since then, but very much playing catch-up with the 'H is for' department, for the next few days, as another Sandown is flying down the tracks toward us!

 

This is the contents of the third parcel from Jon, which the second was taped to, and there's some lovely stuff among the chuck-outs, and everything is Greatfully received! Quick shout-out to Peter E and Brian B, they both have posts in the pipeline, which I will try to get out in the next few days, along with the last Sandown shots!

An absolute mass of Horses, I have a tub of similar stuff, but with few duplicates I can see, and while there may be some similar small ones in the mini-PVC 'toob' toy box, they come from so many sources it's impossible to find all of them!

 

As it happens there is a complete (I think) set of Safari mini-horses toward the centre/bottom of this shot, and I've photographed them separately as a follow-up, I had two duplicates, but they were both sufficiently different to warrant comparison images!

More obvious cavalry mounts, some well known and some less so, my pre-existing box has a lot of this kind of stuff (mostly Spanish or Italian I think, with a few Frenchies), while here we have mostly British and some new production (Accurate/Imex/Italeri types - with bases), the two green saddle-cloth horses may be Spanish, and I'd love an ID on the big black fellah, he looks American maybe?

 

Wild animals, and again there's useful stuff, or new to collection items here, the eraser hippo being a charmer, the large panda and a couple of the elephants had marks I think, but being as how I'm trying to vacate this place (next Friday I think?) and keep the flat tidy, everything's getting sorted and stack a bit rapidly!

 

Hopefully, I will go back over some of it in the weeks ahead, I know I promised to get the brands of the biggies from the small-box post, and we've seen others, so I'll plan some follow-ups once I'm kicking my heels in the flat!

Piggy-wigs! I'm sure I've said before, you can never have too many piggy-wigs, so I'll say it again! The cartoony one is definitely new to the collection, as are the three white-ones I think, but several others look to be new, it'll need a bigger sorting!

 

Sheep, goats and lambs, I hope to sort all the Hong Kong stuff out one day, if not brands, at least sets, but with the goats I think the task will prove impossible, someone like Blue Box or Holly copied it first (ex-Britains), and then everyone else copied it, most of them are unmarked, some of them are very poor examples, and they are all shiny-black polyethylene with a bit of white paint, but one day, I'll have a try!

A handful of cows here, and there's some very interesting stuff, with Crescent and Cherilea and some early British (Trojan/Kentoy?), with an unusual one to the front-left, which I think is Matchbox?

 

A couple of errant sheep one of whom probably needs three dogs to control him! Two of the dogs (left pair) are also new to the collection, while the Hong Kong 'Lassie' will need to be compared to the others against mark - sculpting - paint-colour.

 

The same note on goats, applies to the poultry too, ascribing them all in the future will be a nightmare, and it may well be that both poultry and goats were produced by one or two minor factors, and then bought-in by everyone else as bag/set-fillers?

However, this lot also has easier stuff to ID too, like the two creamy early British produced ones with their red-brush swipe, the PVC duck (middle left) and a couple of hollow-cast ones at the back! The flapping goose is Crescent.

 

Some riders for those horses at the top of the post, not sure if the Athena (Greece) ceremonial's horse was in the lot (might be in part two?), but I may have a spare somewhere. The policeman is Corgi and the race-rider is an unknown - to me - Hong Kong chappie I think, the rest are Britains production of various generations/sets.

Many thanks again to Jon, it really is all useful grist to the mill, and fun to share with the rest of you, while I'm slowly building a decent sample of the Life Guards mounted musicians! Thank you Jon.

A is for Apropos The Previous Post

Just a couple of quickies; 

 

First, don't forget it's the Autumn Sandown Park Toy Fair tomorrow, it's going to be a lovely day for it, and while the air-con' might struggle to keep the place fully cool once it's full of exhaling, warm bodies, it's never too hot, although it will give the all-day attendees a dry throat! Anyway, get on over and fill your boots with old kid's playthings!

Secondly, I found a few more of Claire's Creations images from this Spring (couldn't find the Lifeguard?), so here they are if you're thinking of dropping her a line with an idea for a figure.

The Guardsman

The king

An old-school Gypsy wagon

A canoe! With a mouse!

This was the online image from which Claire modelled the Horse guard she made for me. I might have a go at sewing-in the red cord which runs round the centre of the cartridge-belt?

F is for a Bit Floofy!

Well, soft anyways! Some of you may have noticed that some event for non-self-determinist fan-boys occurred up in Laarden Tarn' earlier this year, in celebration of which an old friend of mine, Claire, produced some hand-knitted (or crotch-et-ted) members of the Royal Family,  Life Guards and Royal Guards, to which, when I saw them on Faceplant, I added my usual pithy call for Horse Guards, and damn-me if she didn't make me my very own Horse Guard

 

We had similar soft-toy animals when we were kids, my brother had 'Bill' the guardsman, who ended-up with some of Grandad Hall's miniatures, a sam-brown from a fancy pet collar and a paper-knife sword - he should appear on the Blog one day, he's somewhere in all the stuff I've been moving around.

While there was also a blue and white lamb and a Santa Claus, I think they all came from patterns you could buy in newsagents, or that came with housekeeping type magazines . . . there always seemed to be a table of them at church fêtes!

Beautifully made, he's about eight inches in his boots and the metallic wool is very clever. I'm sure Claire's Creations would accept commissions if you have a good reference for her to work from, and you can contact her on the above details.

 

Guarding one end of the bookcase!

C is for Crescent Ceremonials . . . . NOT!

This post was going to have twice as many images and be a T is for Two.... post, but half the post (Trojan Lifeguards) just appeared in Plastic Warrior magazine, so you've either seen them recently, or you need to subscribe! Consequently, it's just a little box-ticker on some nice Hong Kong copies, and by "nice" I mean old'ish and unusual, not high-quality originals!

 

I may have one of these in the pile, but I'd never considered his existence until the recent PW Show (in May), when I spotted one on Adrian's stall and said "Ooh, I'll have that, that's different", and Adrian said "There a few more there", pointing to the other end of the table, but there was only one, someone else had swooped first! At which point Chris Smith who was standing chatting behind the stall said "Yeah, they're Crescent copies, I have a few".

 

We saw both my grabs in the show-report post (en guard and drummer), but these are Chris's, and you can see they cloned the band (so technically Kellogg's copies too!), the fighting 54mm's and the 60mm set. Presumably all of them were copied, of which these are known. The base marks, probably release-pin marks from the forming process, are very similar to one generation of the Britains Herald ACW copies, so may very well be the same source/manufacturer?

Many thanks to Chris for the images, and Trojan another time!

U is for Uniform Info!

The title of a favorite page in the old Military Modelling magazine (which I believe has recently announced it's demise?), but absolutely fitting to this post.

I have found among my mothers possessions all sorts of things she never mentioned, one of which was this, which I initially assumed was Great Aunt Nina's (my mother's GA, I'm not sure what her relation to me is, great aunt once removed, great-great aunt?), better known as Helena Hall, an artist/designer who worked with Eric and Gordon Gill and others of that late Arts & Craft/ early Modernist movement in Sussex, but it's not really her style (I have a lot of her work from my Mother's late cousin Betty (of odd jobs in occupied Vietnam!)), so I suspect it's actually the work of John Henry Sheren Hall, one of my Grandfather's brothers.

He was a known naive artist (also of Suffolk) but these are quite different from his pastels and watercolours, so, because I'm not sure, and know nothing else about it, I'm just putting them up here for the figure modellers and painters, as they are clearly studies from the 1900-30's (some clues suggest pre-WWI and no later that 1922 - the amalgamation of the two Life Guard's regiments?) of uniforms, mostly colonial-ceremonial, but one or two fit WWI era regular barrack/parade-dress.

There are other things in the sketch book, none signed, which we will look at another day, and the book itself is tiny, an imperial size closest to modern A6 or A7 (or 'policeman's notebook') which made it easy to crop them all at the A4 setting, and is a 36 leaf George Rowney 'Cartridge Ring Bound' (No.7268) undated, but it might help date them.

The sketches are all pen & ink with some having added colour, probably watercolour, or thinned gouache? I hope you enjoy; I think they are rather lovely.

12th Lancers

7th Dragoon Guards (left), 60th (Royal American) Regiment of Foot (right)?

60th was AKA the Kings Royal Rifle Corps (KRRC)

Generic Line Infantry officer

Gordon Highlanders (left), 17th lancers (right)

8th Hussars (left), Gordon Highlanders (right)

Generic Infantry of the line private (left) - a popular pose at the time?

42nd Highlanders 'The Black Watch' (right)

 

I would say these two are better sketches - anatomically - than the rest and may be taken from statues, cigarette cards or something similar?

2nd Life Guards (left) - stable dress? 13th Hussars (right)

The 13th amalgamated with the 18th 'Royal' Hussars after WWI

Field Artillery (left), unknown Guardsman and mascot (right)

The artilleryman's uniform suggests either pre-WWI or Mesopotamian campaign?

 

Again these are superior draftsmanship and may be static studies against the from-life sketches of the majority, his legs and shoulders are distinctive in the majority of the drawings, here they look more 'professional'?

Horse Guards (left), 1st life Guards (right)

16th Lancers

2nd Life Guards

Unknown . . . infantry mess-dress?

Ditto

17th Lancers (left), Royal Canadian Dragoons (right)

Typical - most interesting sketch . . . no notes!

Got to be ANZAC?

Or Southern African units/native 'horse'/militias?

Coldstream Guards (left), RHA (right)

These two are still with us pretty-much unchanged.

P is for Previously Seen on the Internet . . . III - Ceremonials

Two more from the archive of stuff I've posted elsewhere, and we're all starched and ironed this time, with resin and plastic tourist souvenirs, the former new, the later seen before in one form or another.

Alan Copsey posted some lovely resin Turks he'd found (in Istanbul I think?), and in the subsequent discussion on them and similar figures (those pirates we've seen before here with different bases), and fallout from same, I picked-up these four vaguely-54mm (thick bases) figures in poured resin, which are obviously aimed at our tourist trade (as Alan's were aimed at Turkey's). No Yeoman 'Beefeater' or Horse Guard (they may be out there?) but a nice [Gordon?] Highland officer to make up!

It struck me the new one was (although unmarked) stylistically similar to the larger 85mm G•G-marked one we looked at a while ago, donated to the blog by Peter Evans of Plastic Warrior magazine (and coincidentally - webmaster of the Faceplant group), which was in part the point of the original chat; that these Chinese factories are making things for every budget in every [commercially viable] territory!

I also picked up another boxing of the Cavendish Miniatures Hong Kong copies, apparently sold by Cavendish (and many others) until so recently you may still find the odd one in the kiosks round Soho or Leicester Square, or that funny bazaar half-way up Charring Cross road?

The second issue (I don't know which is which, but would place the smaller/white tray as the newer (it's always about shaving unit-costs) continues the error of transcribing the two Household Cavalry regiments titles; 'Blues' are Horse Guards, 'Royals' are red . . . life-blood, Lifeguards!

You were thinking "They look the same size, what's he on about"! Less cardboard is cheaper, less, white plastic is cheaper than more, yellow, so on an order of say ten thousand units, that can be hundreds of dollars saved, plus, the price can stay the same or go up a bit (people expect things to go up after a few years), so you 'make' at both ends, factory-door and Joe-public!

Q is for Question Time - W is for Who Knows?

We’ve looked at these before, years ago and garnered no clue, so we'll chuck them up here again in the forlorn hope that someone knows something about them, because, not to put to fine a point on it; they're not terribly rare, and turn up quite often.

The first five images are from Chris Smith and I hope he won't mind me saying they weren't the best, but I've done what I can to embiggen them, and brighten them up a bit . . .

. . . and these are they, you should recognise them if you collect ceremonial, early British plastic, or 54mm. They are similar to both, and almost the cross-pollinated offspring-of; Britains Herald and Gemodels, being (I seem to recall - they're not in front of me) between the two in both size and sculpting and are manufactured in a non-chalky polyethylene.

Moving arms on shoulder-pegs (as opposed to arm-spigots) and their similarity to the slightly smaller Gem's might suggest a second version from Gem, or contracted by Culpitt from Gem (I don't think I've ever seen them with icing-remains?) or someone else?

Now I was going to stick my neck out here, put my neck on the block and get a bit necky, necking-it with the suggestion that the connection with Musgrave at Gem Models might lead us to the door of the Kenway Cycle Shop and Kentoys, but, apart from the fact that there was a flaw in that suspicion, namely; Kentoys already had a Household Cavalryman, with a swappable arm, as we've seen here, previously at Small Scale World, who was handed-on to Cavendish, and produced in both colours (red and blue), There is a third option, as 'obvious' as Gem or Kentoys . . .

. . . Airfix! The only other figures commonly appearing with this dead-centre, front-of-base, mould-release pin mark, are the early Airfix 'eight' later issued by Featherlight in Australia and an unknown New Zealand firm, both of whom issued the figures with the same marks, as it's a 'signature' of the tool (and possibly the tool-manufacturer), not the sculptor, although - a caveat - they may have started 'down' there and come 'up' here, no one's sure?

[I think the one with a dark-green base (asterisked) has been repainted by an owner?]

The arguments for each are good, lots of companies produce two versions of some of their figures, so both Gem/Culpitt and Kentoys/Cavendish could be in the frame, while those base marks are very Airfix (and are now my favored option), however, the bases are painted the same colours as all those minor make offshoots - Speedwell, Trojan, Una and VP we tend to associate with Kentoys - though the khaki infantry.

Seen here previously but I couldn't be arsed to dig them out and re-shoot them!

Also the horse is more of a Britains' piracy (mounted highland officer?), so while it would be nice if they were Gemodels, nicer-still if they were Kentoy and really-nice if they were Airfix, I suspect we have to also look to the four pirates for our answer, and recent developments in Plastic Warrior?

And the obvious one there is Speedwell, as they turned to un-chalked, glossy polyethylene for their later khaki infantry and Cowboys & Indians?

They (the figures) only seem to have had Lifeguard iteration (no blue ones) and may well have been produced for a third-party supplying the tourist-novelty/keepsake market . . . even Cavendish!

The mark is not reproduced on the [what I believe are] Trojan versions of the Airfix paratrooper which now looks to be from the recently discovered (by Colin Penn) BR 'plastic machine' moulds, which would leave Trojan (if they had some or a set of those moulds) as a second front-runner in a five horse race! And; might point to these being from BR tools, but re-fitted for commercial operation in a bigger multi-cycle machine, as they are far more common than most of the stuff it now looks like came from there?

However, there's no sign of a release-pin on those moulds for which the front is shown in PW's 176 (current) and 174 (back-issues and subscriptions available), so they would need to have been Airfix first, to have had the mark reproduced, if they were BR, and if so for these; why not for the paratrooper?

What do you think . . . or know? Have you found dodgy, crumbly or polystyrene versions of these, with odd paint or no paint? Colin? I hate to point the finger, but you've got the BR mould list . . . any Lifeguards or 'Household cavalry' listed?

I favour Airfix, from the commercial aspect and numerousness of them AND the base mark, but they may-well have made them exclusively for a third party contract, and Airfix had had a Household Guardsman of their own in the 'Bergan/Beton' set? Is that plastic the same colour as the late, post-chalk, slightly flashy, HO-OO Guards?

Also Airfix seem to have indulged in a bit of piracy over the years and mightn't have wanted their name associated with these Britains knock-offs? But that only means they must have (or 'probably') had another branding, if only a phantom?

Chris - many-thanks for the images; 'probably maybe might be' Airfix . . . for . . . someone else? And . . . can you set me an easier one next-time!!