J is for Jährliche Osterhasenparade

Did you anticipate this post? I'd totally forgotten . . . again! But Brian Berke has done one of his regular photo-essays for us, by heading down to Scully & Scully, at 54 Park Avenue, an address, to Americophiles, as prestigious or exciting, as something on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées would be to a Francophile, or Park Lane to an Anglophile! And why has it taken me nearly a decade to look that up?

 

Brian had real problems with reflection this time, hence two visits were called for, and he even tried different cameras, and while I've done what I can with cropping and contrast, you can see a camera in three or four of them, and I cropped the mice out of a larger image, so that one is a bit fuzzy, because they were background!

 

As always, the sculpts, and their painting are exquisite, and while we've seen some of them before, it's all new painting, and/or some new vignettes, along with new trees, I think. I didn't reject any of the images, so there's a bit of duplication.

 

Nothing else to add, as they are a perennial here, now, so please enjoy a bit of Easter magic from the Big Apple.

 

Many thanks to Brian for these, they are a real treat!

F is for Follow-up - Fantastic Flying Fancies!

So, as promised, I fired-off the recently found (and seen here) Tom Smith novelty artifact, the 'Surprise Space Rocket' at our Christmas Breakfast (more of a brunch) meet, and we can now look at the contents and finish studying this delightful example of how Austerity Britain cheered itself up in the 1950's! Actually, probably the 1960's!

 

This has a video of the launch in the middle, but also has all the images from both posts as an accompanying slide show, and I didn't know whether to put it at the start or the end, but the whole point of the thing (post and event) is to see what happens, so it should go first!

 

So, the contents were a bit disappointing, in that I had hoped they might be space-related, astronauts, spacemen, little UFO's or something, but actually they were pretty standard budget-end novelties, classics in fact, with two whistles, one a novelty face, a 'magic' fortune-telling fish, plastic 'tangram' puzzle and small red balloon. In fact, it's all a bit red!

 

Not a game - see video - there was also a very simple card rocket kit to cut out, and glue, the only real nod to the theme of the container, I will scan and print it, laminate it to some stiff card, and make up the duplicate, as a future follow-up, to this follow-up!

 

The six pieces are one-sided (colour/print-wise) as I may be able to build it on a card tube or wooden dowel of the correct diameter, and reinforce the landing legs with tooth-picks or coffee stirrers?

 

The party hats were the bulk of the 'shot', being the sort you see in old TV sitcoms, soaps or drama's from the 1960's or early 1970's, so it may not be the 1950's item I thought it might be?

 

Much taller than modern Christmas Cracker hats, and manufactured in crepe-paper, they have tissue frills around their tops in the same pinky-orange paper as their restricting-for-packing, paper 'vest' wraps, and one is decorated.

 

The decoration is more Easter-themed, with rabbits, bears and little flowery things (it looks like), than Christmassy, but of the same mawkishly sentimental style as wrapping papers of the era, I can still, well remember. So these 'poppers' were clearly aimed at the birthday and other celebratory market, to take up some of the slack of the quiet period between Christmas cracker seasons!

 

Construction was a loosely overlapped card tube, held together with the decorated rocket paper, with chip-board discs sandwiching the spring, and lighter fibreboard or hardboard discs holding the toys in another sandwich above the hats. A gap of about 10-mil, helps the spring generate acceleration, before the contents meet the lid.

 

Turns out the top just slides out, and I'm hoping to carefully feed this back behind the outer wrapper, eventually. For now, I've folded it down to preserve the folds and prevent the loss of the hardboard piece!

 

You will notice from the video, the toys go one way and the hats another, one suspects that if the quite substantial, bed-spring type wire-helix, hadn't been in compression for 50 or 60-years, everything would have flown further! There was no pyrotechnics though, I thought there may be a snap, as with crackers, but nothing of the sort!

N is for Nearly the Nativity!

It's the 20th! I don't know where that month went in such a hurry, but it did! I haven't shot any Nativity sets this year, nor have we had a chance to clear any of the unused stuff from last year, or the years before, all sitting down the bottom of Picasa at 1968! But, to prevent anything else joining them, there are still a few bits from this year to get up here, and this is Brian's Nativity finds in a store in New York.

 

The Archangel Gabriel getting busy with Satan! Two sizes.

 

The family shot, then they were off to Egypt as asylum-seeking refugee migrants!

 

OK, got it!

 

But did they pay?

 

13 pieces is a fair count, and beautifully presented in gold silk!

 

Quite a few styles, from the super realistic miniatures through to the mawkishly sentimental cartoonish baby-faced stuff, but nice that you can 'pick and mix' off the shelf, or slowly add items, year to year. Mostly resin, but it looks like some may be china? Many thanks to Brian as always, for sending these into the Blog.

U is for Umteenth Crimbo Post

. . . and there's more to come, but here's a few bauble loose-ends to put away. Some going on the tree, some viewed in passing as it were!

 

I actually bought this back in March, it was . . . is, technically, an Easter bauble, presumably to be hung on some silver-sprayed twigs, or another 100% consumerist, modern, non-traditional, 'interior-decor' shite! But I thought, well, it's a blown-glass bauble, it can go on the Christmas tree! It'll probably lose the bow, though! Very much in the style of the set of four (with the dodgy elephant) I found late last year.

 

I always try to add at least one cone, they are all over the tree in every size, and this Decoris one was big, but the first I saw, a while back now, and a nice colour, so it's gone in the box awaiting a tree!

 

Not baubles, but rather nice, I thought, slightly stylised Magi, as candleholders, sent to the Blog by Brian Berke, you can see other colourways behind the facing trio, so you can have quite a caravan, if you so wish!

 

And I love their headdresses, which have the look of non-Disney Aladdin/1001 Nights stuff from illustrated fairy-story 'comics' of the 1960's, like Pixi Tales, or Once Upon a Time. Turkish or Gourd turbans, now - of course - there's a specie of gourd called a Turk's Turban!

 

Brian also spotted this figural pair, I think the one on the left is Ms Vogue, the po-faced Meryl Streep character from the movie, you know, wasername, just retired, Crewella something-or-other? I'm not sure on the other one, is it supposed to be Ellen DeGeneres? She's not known for colour, or glasses? Fun, but too much appliqué stuff for my tree!

 

Adrian had this vintage one on his stall, last month, and I was tempted, but the flat-paint face and white beard & fur put me off, I like my vintage ornaments to be spirit painted, so the mirrored interior surface shines through the colour.

As mentioned above, I'm no fan of 'stuff' glued-on, there are a few in the family collection, but only a few, and Mum found them all! Now, Mum would have loved this, but, because it's pink, and she didn't have pink on her tree, she would have given it to me, for the 'gay tree', and because it would have been a present, I would have accepted it with the love intended, therefore, I bought it, if that makes sense?

 

I bought these three, unbranded, from the new/old (they moved to bigger premises and changed their name) hardware store in Fleet the other day, pretty sure I recognised them, but I primarily grabbed them because they are quite small, and the smaller ones bring a bit of interest to the higher portion of the tree.

 

And damn me if they (inner pair) aren't the better quality originals of the ones I got from TKMaxx (outer pair) back in November! It's not just in Toy Soldiers' that the Chinese copy each-other!

C is for Cardology

Cardology are a firm I encountered for the first time at the Birmingham Spring Fair, and they couldn't have arrived soon enough, with the recent demise of Clinton's, where I've been buying nice fold-up cards for a few years now (we saw the Morris Traveller with cats one year, but I've given more away, as Christmas cards), the shots I fired off aren't the best, but the link at the end has all of them.

They are a tenner each, which looks a bit steep, but you are buying a crafted keepsake, which, with care, can be got out and displayed again, year after year, and, dare I suggest - become a collection of novelties!

Cardology website: https://cardology.co.uk/collections/christmas-pop-up-cards