News, Views etc . . . Latecomers

Late Date

Further to yesterday's post on this weeks dates (below) - I missed this one, although it looks to be mostly console or arcade type stuff, there is cosplay and so on, so worth a punt if you're in the area with time on your hands!

Saturday 8th & Sunday 9th June 2019

Glasgow - Replay Events - Play Expo Glasgow
Braehead Arena, Kings Inch Road, Glasgow G51 4BN, Scotland (venue)
Unit 16, Cochran Close, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, MK8 0AJ (promoter)
Web. - www.playexpoglasgow.com
eMail - braehead.arena@intu.co.uk
Tel. 1 - 01418 868 300 (venue)
Tel. 2 - 01253 301 172 (promoter)

Links

Wonder if Trump got to make a day trip to the Toy Soldier Factory?
https://toysoldierfactory.ie/

FAO taking a leaf out of Hamley's book?
https://www.mingtiandi.com/real-estate/china-retail-real-estate-news/hk-listed-toy-retailer-brings-fao-schwarz-to-china/

Looking for Art in Oregon?
https://www.orartswatch.org/humans-on-the-move-profoundly/

T is for Two - Wheelers!

Bit of a lazy post, because I had a lazy weekend and didn't get anything ready for yesterday or today, except the stuff for the other Blogs announced in yesterday's post! Both these were shot at the May show, both self-explanatory and the second probably seen before - certainly seen before in some form.

This is obviously a touristy-thing; I suspect from Ireland, it's err . . . a Jaunting Car! For going for a jaunt in, obviously! I said they were self-explanatory! Nothing else to say really, it's a brittle or tinny polystyrene, airbrush-decorated through stencils and around 54mm or 1:32nd scale, almost in the style of a porcelain 'fairing', the sort of thing it probably replaced.

There is no clue underneath as to make or origin, date or anything else, so that's the first; a probably Irish jaunt'er! It's also the leading candidate for the most boring shot ever loaded on Small Scale World Dot Blogspot Dot Com competition! However, don't think I dislike it, I bought it - after I'd shot it!

The second has been before, but I can't remember if it was a boxed one, and whether or not the figure was PVC or ethylene, but here's another one and it'll get it in the tag-list so it comes up with the previous post/s. This bronze version is - I think - the earlier one (even though I consider the vinyl figures more common than the ethylene ones) that the Hong Kong copy was based-on.

[checked upon posting - it was red with white horses and the PVC spear-man]

The box, nice 1960's (?) artwork; playing-on the Chariot Race from Ben Hur on one panel, with a reasonably accurate depiction of the contents on the larger side.

N is for Nature and Gnome's Stools!

Mixing the 'small scales' here with little animals, small plants and small plastic plants, it's a sort of 'News, Views - Bits & Bobs' with a ragged thread running through it!

I shot these over a few days at the cusp of the months just gone and just arrived, I'm sure they are Ink Caps (Coprinus), but which one (there are a dozen or more) is not so clear, my bible for such things (Philips - of course!) doesn't have a perfect match, these (in the pictures) being a bit small for the 'standard' Shaggy Ink Cap (Lawyer's Wig), but a bit big for the Coprinus Lagopus they otherwise more closely resembled.

The detritus left in the third shots is what you can make the ink out of and which gives them their common-name, except you should harvest it before it gets to the state shown here!

Apropos the Wade / Not-Quite-But-Probably-Irish-Factory-Wade Leprechauns we saw the other day, Peter Evans sent me this a couple of days later and I was saving it for the actual 'News Views' but thought this was an ideal way to mix toys and naturalism!

Those of you with a good eye will have realised - immediately upon seeing the above - that what I wrote the other day was a load of cobblers, he wasn't carving a boat OR a crib . . . he's a shoemaker!

He's plastic and not sitting on an Ink Cap, but rather a Fly Agaric, or at least a hand-painter's idea of a Fly Agaric! And there are shade's of Fontanini in the Carrara'esque sample of Connemara marble beneath the Fly Agaric!

A distant relative (by time rather than blood) used to breed Connemara Greys for the London taxi trade and is known in the family for his pronouncement in the 1900's that petrol engines were noisy and smelly and would never take-off! He (and the taxi trade) lost his horses to the hell of Flanders and as the Western Allies grabbed large chunks of the former Ottoman Empire with its cheap oil (throwing electric vehicles on the scrap-heap for three generations), he chose to retire

Sadly although not distant by blood; he's far enough away for me to be unable to apply for Irish Citizenship - so I'm pinning my hopes on the Tories wreaking Bwreakxit!

Shades of Tintin!

This is meant to be a Fly Agaric too, it's a Hong Kong (branded to a 'KT') plastic cake-decoration version of a Japanese cast-lead miniature garden ornament, the lead versions themselves replacing the even earlier ceramic/pumice ones. It's posed in an apple I rescued from three Hornets . . .

26th September 2017

. . . these three Hornets! Note the nervous beating a retreat . . . twice! I'd chopped a few of the rotten apples up with the mower and they were emanating a cider-smell from the top of the compost-bin!

24th September 2013

They get so drunk on apples at this time of year they can't fly! This chap (probably a barren chap'ess!) fell of the woodpile several times before I started filming and went on to make several more attempts, getting caught in the spider's web again too!

Like human drunks struggling to make their legs walk in a straight-line, it just couldn't get its wings to work properly, buzzing furiously, it was going nowhere, flight-wise!

T is for Two - Irish Figures . . . From Ireland

It's funny, you should be looking at something else here today; but I put it on the back burner after faffing-around for three hours, writing two-and-a-half lines, renumbering the images twice and adding a screen-cap . . . it needs more work! Likewise some lovely Swoppets were sent to the blog this week, but I'll sort them over the weekend, they would have been rushed if I'd posted them tomorrow (Friday); so I grabbed these two from Picasa.

Except that it's three but we'll look at the one first! Hailing from Comet/Authenticast's subsidiary Gaeltacht Industries' works in the Republic of Eire, and frankly not up to the quality one would expect from Holgar Eriksson, so possibly one of the other sculptors?

It's also funny that last weekend I shot tons of stuff at Sandown Park, yet still haven't blogged most of the stuff I shot at Sandown three months ago! This was one of them (from three months ago), nice ECW musketeer, spoilt by the daft firing-arm with its elbow pointing at the ceiling . . . or sky!

These came from a charity shop (British Heart Foundation - I think?) about a week ago, clearly the gods (or 'your' god, if you've only got the one!) wanted a T for Two Irish! When I first saw them I though "Ooh, Wade", picked up the unmarked one first and thought "No?", and then found the mark on the other. I think they are related, the blue glaze is the same, but for 'T is for Two' purposes, the one on the right counts.

They are similar to Wade's figurines (Seagoe Ceramics?) but they don't have the lines on the bases. Equally they are similar to the bisque cake decorations of yesteryear, but gloss-fired enamel, where the cake toppers used to get a matt-paint over the fired clay. They also show signs of having been glued to something with brown/animal glue; so maybe touristy something's?

Anyone got any ideas? I mean - clearly they are Leprechauns and I have to be very polite to them, but - any other ideas?!! The one on the left (Pádraig) seems to be carving a crib (Christmassy) while the one on the right (Pádraic) seems to be panning for gold to put in a pot at the end of a rainbow . . . of course!