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 Box-ticking Barges

In some of the several Egyptian posts we've had this year half by accident (working with what Peter Evans sent to the Blog) and half by design (the stuff I subsequently purchased) to compare, complete or because they were dirt-cheap (the disappointing pens), which actually didn't disappoint as I expected them to disappoint, so they met expectations; we saw the odd piece of Atlantic HO giving size/scale to things, and in the getting-out and putting-away for photographs I found a bag of painted stuff from somewhere-somewhen, we're going to look at them now!

The two barges from set 1505 Boats on the Nile, there was a larger Pharaoh's barge with set-sail and covered throne-canopy-thing, these are the more workaday vessels plying their trade up and down the Nile from the Mediterranean to Sudan.

The box shows oarsman but I'm not sure I've ever seen them, I certainly don't have them and it seems to be a complete sets otherwise, have you ever seen them? There are plug-ins on the lager vessel in the other set but they don't seem to have oars either? The curse of art room pre-publicity photographs/artwork again I suspect (think Airfix Polish Lancers or Esci Carthaginians!).

Both together; these are OBE's as far as painting goes, I picked them up like this as part of a Job lot some time ago, but I can't remember where/when. basically reed-vessels with a sun-shade/cabin.

The two swan-necked finials at port and stern are plug-ins and don't line up terribly well with the hull, or not smoothly as they would if they were tied-in reed bundles, but then; beggars can't be choosers and it was hard to credit anyone issuing Egyptian warships, in small-scale, in the 1980's, and the fact they didn't go with anything on the market - time-wise - was irrelevant!

They came with a complete army, painted by the same guy I think, although with more detail he has done a fine job, compared to the basic blocking-in of the boats. A complete set also contains a full Pharaoh's Court runner, which I may have sorted into their section, or the seller may have split-away or kept them?

I particularly like the rendering of the Nubian's/Sudanese/Southern Tribesmen; I have an old Humbrol Authenticolour paint-tin called Polished Leather, and it is one of my favourite paints, a semi-gloss or silk (you have to let it dry overnight) it's brilliant for dark-skin, horse-hair, wagon-details, baggage straps, rifle slings, puddles (puddled), oil-stains (thinned-down), all sorts, I don't know what I'll do when it runs out!

That's it, ancient Egyptians, vessels, Atlantic - boxes ticked, because . . . by accident - it's been a bit of an 'Egyptian Year' here at Small Scale World!

OBE is for Other Bugger's Efforts!

As opposed to MBE : My Bloody Efforts

Even briefer than yesterday's post, but worth a punt I hope you'll agree, I took this shot years ago, I mean about ten years ago and they were in the stock of Plastic Toy Soldiers (PTS52 on evilBay).

The original is on the right, to the left are three home paints, probably from three artists and while clearly one is a straight Khaki transposition and the other wearing a tropical jacket (?), the third - on the far left - is beyond my limited 'Uniforminfo' skills! Is he a Gurkha? Were they shoved into kilts at some point?

Anyway, they make a nice group and hopefully will give people who paint-up rare'ish figures some ideas, there's just the finding of the figures to be done first!

Throwing this up here as a WTHIT*. I used (as a small scale collector) to think this was a scale down of the Britains Floral Garden Folk's teenage boy, but it's not, It's more like a reverse of the Hornby Hobbies diminutive PVC purple-shirted hippy sitting on the grass.

It's about 35/40mm and might be from a set of O-gauge figures (but I haven't encountered the rest of the 'set' if it's out there), so could he be a die-cast vehicle accessory, or from a kit (he's polystyrene), does anyone recognise him?

* What the hell is it?!!