FMC is for Water Buffalo!

A lot of the purchases at Sandown Park, earlier this month, were suited to stand-alone posts, and this is a classic - in World War II, while we, in the UK, were melting down railings to make bombs, and German housewives were being told not to whine about a lack of bananas, the Americans could afford to make corporate desk-toy freebies, in bronze!

 

I'm not 100% sure which model this is actually representing, but I think it's the 'Amtank' (LVT (A)-1) (37mm main gun), or something similar like the LVT(A)-4 (75mm main gun), both built on LVT-2 chassis (there were lots of marks and body-types!), also known variously as an Amtrac, Buffalo or Water Buffalo, and this model appears to be a braised bronze model, of the desk-ornament/advertising variety, with a fixed turret.

 

And while the origins date back to 1935 and the civilian design 'Alligator', this is definitely a wartime, USMC procurement-driven version, so such a model is as conspicuous a sign of wealth/consumption, as you're likely to find! And, from the heft, a very useful paperweight!

 

The barrel of the gun is a steel rod, embedded in the mantlet and blacked-down to match the patina of the vehicle/model, which may have had a chemical dip, to get this antiqued look?

 

FMC is really for Food Machinery Corporation! A 'toolmaker' in common parlance, you can see the welts of the braising where the maker's plate has been added last. It could be welded steel, but it's too heavy, equally, it's not soft-enough to be a base-metal, so bronze is the obvious material, although it appears to have been slush-cast (bronze is more commonly sand-cast?), and then tidied-up with both the baseplate, and possibly an oval plate on the rear face of the hull? From the polishing on the left side, a copper-rich bronze!

 

 After a clean!

 

An oddity, a probable rarity, and over 80-years old, it's possibly not far off the same size as the Airfix Buffalo II, an open-topped troop-delivery vehicle, for which this is the fire-support variant, usually found on either wing/end of the landing line, to suppress enemy fire and engage bunkers. But it might be a bit bigger, people who know me, know how bad my 'scale eye' is, it might be closer to 1:48th or a round 1:50th?

 

If anyone with better maths than me would like to try working it out, the tape measure says it's 125mm long, 50mm wide and approximately 65mm high?

O is for Older Charity Shop Stuff

These were procured between January and October 2022, and are from a larger folder we will dip into a couple more times to empty, and there's a run-up to Christmas post on Charity Shop purchases coming too.

We're going from the sublime to the ridiculous in this post, and while not ridiculous, this little set from Red Deer hasn't turned-up in either of the Red Deer haunts Peter Evans or me have been sourcing Red Deer from! But it turned-up in a charity shop for less than a quid? Mini-vinyls!

 

This and the next one, were real finds, they were a few quid each, can't remember how much but not enough, maybe £3.50p each, something like that. They are almost certainly ivory, and not bone, they are too fine a texture, and a few years ago they would have been worth a lot at auction, if not thousands, certainly hundreds, especially for this one, as it's a recognisable character figurine of The Mahatma Gandi?

 

But I'm not so sure now, selling ivory without provenance is hard (I've kept the receipts to establish provenance for futures sale), but they are both 'clean' enough to be illegal, modern pieces, which is what the legislation is designed to clamp-down on?

 

This one is possibly a goddess, or priestess, and with a slight patina, could be a little older, I have a fair bit of ivory in the collection from teeny little Indian cracker-toys, and bracelet charms, from before the last war, to Japanese pieces better than these.

 

But it is all a bit of a liability now, it's fine to own the stuff, but selling it and/or buying it can be problematical, so one day it will probably all go to a Museum, but not until I've put them all on an 'Ivory' page in the A-Z's, or here?

 

Santa is a cat person! Hey, it's not the 6th yet, but three folders of crackers, baubles and cake decorations have now joined Brian's nativity shots for an eleven-month sleep! And I can't remember if the Tortoise was resin or PVC, but I thought it was worth a punt?

This was another real find, a cold-painted 'Vienna bronze', probably German and despite the chipping, a really nice piece of antique novelty figurine, and again eminently saleable in the hundreds, so one day I will part with it, to finance a gap-filler/grail piece, but for now I rather like them and they stay!

S is for Squirrelling Around

Spring struck suddenly a couple of days ago, and I got out and mowed! Only took the tops off to help the lawn dry out, and I'm hoping to get a lower cut done today or tomorrow, but it got the old blood pumping and I managed to sort out all the missing image folders and import them into Picasa, that evening!

 

It took hours, in batches of like-stuff, or random lots of 24 folders, which had to be done one at a time, but once I'd got a rhythm going the time slid-by, until - suddenly - it was done! I even found a few folders which had been lost on the old machine, but I still have a lot of sorting and minor 'housekeeping' to finish!

One of the folders I found was this bunch of squirrels, which is a bit Easter'y, he says; watching them all charging around in the beech trees, over the road, as I type!

The original starter for the folder was a TBS bag heading into storage a while ago, nothing too exciting, with an R&L 'Stretch Pet' cereal premium/novelty telescopic one at back left, and the Schleich one from Mum's cake-decoration tub, back right, it'll now join the rest of the animals, having done sterling service on chocolate-logs for years now! And, I know; two rabbits and some other less than tree-squirrel types!

 

In front are a bunch of more cartoony ones, with the grey one on the right having some age I suspect (1970's?) and the little one's a Kinder type. The two on the left go together - I can't work out if they are cake-candle holders or missing something? While the other two with their contrasting tummy paint look like they may go together, but I'm not sure that they do, just both following the Hollywood cartoon trope re. decoration!

 

This was in our bedroom when we were kids, and it was sort of accepted I'd inherit it one day (my brother got the silver dragon match-box!), cold-painted bronze, probably German. It would be employed as a night-light during the power-cuts of the 1970's, Mum would put a new candle in it, and in the morning there'd be an interesting stalagmite growing off the roots, to be removed with satisfying waxy 'snaps'!

The glass was cracked and went to recycling about 18-months ago, but I've seen packets of them for affordable sale on evilBay, so I'll sort that at the other-end, it's in storage now. Lead weighted and with the squirrel a separate piece who can be removed for cleaning, the long branch makes a carrying handle, and I love it!

 

Shot these last night to fatten the folder/post! The one on the right is a copy of the Schleich one, so I assume the - very Easter - hare is too? Modern Chinese and from a mixed lot, which may have been from Peter Evans or Chris Smith, so thanks to both for everything. They follow the pattern of those cheap two-half dinosaurs I found in Farnborough a few years back?

Anyway, that's a few squirrels . . . and things; Happy Easter readers!

H is for How They Come In - They Come Back!

My late Mum was a hoarder, not the daytime schedule/early-evening, TV reality-show, whacko-piles of damp newspaper that eventually kills the occupant in a stairs triggered landslide of old news and sports reports type hoarder, but rather someone who went through the war and it's deprivations, and determined never to throw anything away which might be useful. Consequently the sorting of her estate has been a long, slow process - which is ongoing - and which has thrown-up some interesting stuff, among which was this . . .

. . . I'm not sure if it's an old J&J/Boots fabric-plaster box, or an early Cotton-bud/Q-Tip container, but the contents were momentarily a complete mystery to me (given that she knew I collected this stuff and would pass on the odd bit she did find), until I remembered she had taken a few pieces from my Brother and I, years ago (mid/late-1970's) to try her hand at casting them in silver, using the 'lost-wax' method, but with pre-formed plastics rather than wax sculpts . . . she may have intended to experiment with plaster moulds too, I can't remember.

The reminder of this event was actually a small Britains baby bear (of which I had several in my Ancient Briton army!), which is missing, but I seem to recall both the bear and a small elephant or lion 'not working', so they must have been lost in the 'losing' process?

You can see she took items which might be commercially popular as novelties, Guy the Gorilla was still popular in the national memory, big cats, little cats and pigs are always popular as are rabbits, the highlander was once one of my most prized possessions, like the 'last man standing' Airfix German Paratrooper officer, I had gone to some effort over the painting of him!

There is also the possibility that another incident started the thought process which led to this micro-hoard . . . we were on holiday somewhere, and Mum had made us follow her round some antiques place, you know the sort of thing - with lots of 'kiosks' or bays - and as a reward for our behavior whilst obviously bored, asked us if we'd like to chose something from a cheapie cabinet, I can't recall what my brother chose, but I chose a piglet, landscaped on a plinth; a mini vignette. She then tried to talk me out of it with a disdainful "You don't want that"!, but I was adamant, and the thing was purchased, what she had spotted which I hadn't was that it was a Britains piglet (as above) heavily glossed (black & white) to resemble glazed ceramic, landscaped with Pollyfilla^TM stained with watercolours, on a stack of old coat-buttons, glued together and painted gold! She pointed all this out back at the car, but hadn't wanted to be rude in front of the dealer! I was still happy with it, but the pig soon broke-free of the filler and joined the other animals in the farm tub!

And no - I don't know why there's a Christmas Cracker miniature compass in there with them!

Point of focus was different on the two shots! Highlights include the Britains running rabbit and sitting cat, along with the piglet being fed from the later farm figures' set.

Now . . . I thought I had one of these, but it hasn't turned up in all the sorting and consolidating I've been doing since January, so finding our childhood pair (Mum bought us one each in Fleet Toys, not because we wanted them but because she thought they were dinky!) has been a useful bonus, although one of them has been more chewed than the other; I'll blame my brother as I just don't remember playing with them that much!

This article - on stone animals - has been in the 'long-queue' since 2014 (ignore the given date - it's how I sort stuff in Picasa), and now needs a complete re-shoot, which won't be done for a while yet, but one image was worth pulling-up and adding to this post as it's . . .

. . . another Duck Billed Platypus! Although if you know anything about these critters Duck Billed Dinobeast is more apt, they have a poison spur and a bad temper! But if you are the last/only living species of your entire taxonomic family and genus AND used to be hunted for food by the pink monkeys; you'd be a bit mad.

This one is bronze with 18/22ct gold-leaf on the bill and webbed-claws, the whole soldered/braised (?) to a stone! He's about twice the size of the Britains plastic platypuses, -pusses? Platipii? And must be an upmarket Australian tourist memento thing . . . I have a cheaper miner with pick-axe, in whitemetal, similarly attached to a piece of stone, which might be Antipodean, from the Ruhr or Welsh?

B is for Basingrad Bronze

These have been in Picasa since the autumn of 2014, so it's about time they got an airing, although they will probably be of more interest to the War Gamers or general historians than the toy collectors, but I try to entertain all sorts here!

This is one of several models of Basing House (or 'Basing Castle') we will be looking at over the next few days and is the all-weather outdoor site-model of the whole siege-area, cast in bronze and positioned so that you can place the remains in the context of the time - we won't look at the remains, they really aren't anything to look at and I didn't photograph them!

I believe the walls were part of a more permanent or existing defence, but most of the banks and ditches (not the main dry-moats to the house complex but those further out) are from the ECW siege.

Another view of the main house complex which was actually two houses, the old circular-walled 'Norman' fortified house and the more modern 'New House' where the family lived in rather grander splendor that the old buildings could provide, the two entered through a citadel gatehouse to the North - removed by vandals.

At this scale the New House looks to be a nice Elizabethan country house, maybe half timbered and a bit posh, and it was all those, but it was also as heavily fortified as the old house and made for war not Waugh; If you get what I mean!

The whole site - mid-siege; the Parliamentary forces surrounding the house on the river plains, while the Royalists sit on the hill slowly getting hungry!

I think this would benefit from a midnight commando raid (it's not terribly secure) with a handful of micro-tanks so that the next day tourists find a motorised panzer regiment streaming in from the top, while tank destroyers sit waiting in the village with an A/T-gun screen and a mixed battle group is strung-out over the old main camp of Parliament to hold the wing and direct the armour along the river toward the anti-tank ambush!

One day I'll drink enough to get caught doing it - torch in my teeth; "Peow-peow"!

B is for Bronze

Saw a nice model of a toy lizard the other day which was very good for the type of cheapie-rubber thing it was, in fact it was so good it reminded me of my mother's bronze, which was a great favourite with my brother and I when we were kids, to the point where I mused it might be a copy of the bronze and I commented to that effect...

...and went off to dig out the metal one and photograph it. It's not the same, the pose and detail are different but the treatment of the eyes is similar and they are about the same - true to life - size.

Probably German, I don't know whether it's cast solid bronze or a cold-cast bronzed-resin, it's heavy enough to be solid, and the quality hints at 'hot bronze' but the little holes in the underside [Between the front and back pairs of legs] may be for weighting with lead?

[Next day] Thanks to Paul's Bod's Paul I can now add that it's a Wiener bronze, and was also used by Alfred Dunhill for ash-trays, although this one would have been mounted on a block of pale marble (hence the two mounting holes with a darker marble sphere held in the crook of the tail (hence its odd angle). It is a solid 'hot bronze' not 'yer cheep'o resinous crap'!

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B is for Barrels

C is for Cold Cast Bronze Animals