F is for Fontanini - Part 3 - Waterloo

Or at least the 'Napoleonics'. Hard to tell if this is a set of eight, or a set of ten poses, I suspect the giant ones are (or include) poses/pose variations not found in the line's smaller sizes? There is also a pair of mounted figures in the same line.

I've been asked not to add too much waffle to this post by another author who is preparing an article on them for Plastic Warrior - so after the verbiage of the last two posts I'll try to keep this text-light!

Looked at the other day in the fun post on size, they are really huge and weigh kilo's! I don't know how big they are but you can judge from the other figures in the shot that they are 800mm+. Neither pose seems to exist in the smaller sizes.

You don’t fly these back to the UK or the 'States unless you're wealthy (but then you'd need to be pretty well-off to buy them in the first place!), but you could drive them home - although they might need they own passports?!!

Their smaller brethren, these are the same size as the Rococo/Regency couple and pirate we looked at yesterday and have been given - in the case of the foot figures - the same washed-out, subdued hue, finish.

The same can't be said for the two mounted figures, who have been given a supremely attractive, even 'classy' finish, subdued palette again; but the subtly-weathered, solid colour gives them a real campaign feel, the horses too, are lovely.

Fontanini produced their mounted sculpts as pairs, primarily for the tourist trade with the result that when they dipped their foot in the 'Toy Soldier' market by scaling-down to 55/60mm, they ended-up with a lovely set of cowboys and Indians with lots of foot poses but only two mounted figures and one horse pose for each set of protagonists!

Another PW show-purchase, I think these have been repainted by the end-user, but it's a neat job in flat, matt colour and gives them the appearance of just stepping out of an old print. They seem to have been numbered in sequence, unlike the Rococo figures where my two are over a hundred apart - in a set of four!

The guy with the musket across his chest is a new pose from the previous image and missing from the eight are a dismounted Dragoon (French)/Life Guard (British) type, a [British?] Grenadier in busby and an [Austrian/Russian?] Grenadier in mitre-cap. Similar headress'ed figures of guidon-bearers and drummers appear in the larger Carrara sets

Hope that's brief enough P?

Back to Fonplast tomorrow.

F is for Fontanini - Part 2 - Figures

It's funny - or Ironic - having started as a small-scale collector I have all the 35/40/50mm stuff, but in storage, so we'll look at all the commoner stuff (pirates, native warriors and nativity figures, along with cake decorations) probably as separate posts, years hence by which time there will be so much about them on the web they'll all, only be box-tickers, so may go straight on the A-Z listing?

While what I've picked up in the larger scales is bitty, and mostly Hong Kong copies, but it helps illustrate the variety of Fontanini's production which is the aim of this post.

I am less and less a fan of 'absolute' scale-gauge-ratio-size but I understand that some people do get excited by it, so throughout this article will give a double measurement thus; 65/75mm. The first number being the approximate distance between soles of feet and eye-line of an upright-posed figure (in millimetres), the second being the approximate total height of the item with integral base and/or added plinth, excluding plumes, feathers, crown-shards etc..

Tourists are funny animals, they don't like to be seen buying the cheapest option available, but few will go for the top-end either, as a result the main size of Carrara marble memento found is the mid-sized ones; five, seven, eight or ten-inch figures, which tend to turn-up in charity shops (thrift stores) regularly.

Here I shot two in the window of just such a shop - after closing time - only to purchase them a couple of weeks later when I noticed they'd been moved to a shelf at the back! They are probably not 'a pair', their bases are finished differently; one highlighted in gold the other left faux-ivory and the marble plinths are of different dimensions, but they have been brought together by someone recognising their common ancestry!

There are - as we saw the other day - much larger versions of these figures (up to nearly a meter) and smaller figures 70-100mm were also sold, these two are 150/190mm (6/7½ inches) and are finished in PVC washes from a subdued pastel palette, which gives a sun-faded, antique'y look to them.

These articles have been in preparation for a while and were going to be a quick overview about a year ago, but as items came-in the folder grew, and in recent months I have been actively seeking the stuff, and this chap came in last week!

He's another Carrara marble tourist's sample and the same 150/190mm as the previous pair, this is the commonest form of these to be found. The pose is one of four that go back to the 1960's, a second set of sculpts were issued as small scale 'toy soldiers' in the 1970's as boxed trays (one of each pose) and point-of-sale counter display boxes as individual 'pick-and-mix' figures.

Both sets bear the unmistakeable hallmarks of Elio Simonetti's work with the flowing garb, both hands occupied, facial expression bringing each figure to life and giving them not only character but 'personalities'. There were also pairs of earlier Georgian types.

Here we see Mr. Simonetti's work on the left with a set of Turkish figures from Fonplast's toy soldier range next to a set of US cavalry plainly designed by someone else, both are 65/75mm and in the same dense PVC of the bulk of Fontanini's products of the time, the raw material colour being the same as that used by the 45/50mm and 65/70mm nativity ranges of the time (1970-80's).

The Turkish set are also very similar to the Elastolin set copied/carried by Cané, it is likely Simonetti was behind both - I can't emphasise how important this sculptor was to the toy/model figure oeuvre, just as Stadden's (or Musgrave's) stuff turns up in every size, material and subject matter from sports trophies to HO footballers, so more and more stuff is becoming recognisable as Simonetti's work.

Compare the flowing bloused trousers of the Turks with the more rigid or padded look of the bloused cavalry trousers; the animation of the Turks against the more stilted, upright and uncomfortable-in-their-own-skin posing of the cavalry. Anatomically too, the cavalry are not quite as good as the Turks having rather too-long (yet somehow visually 'stumpy') legs for too short; almost childlike, torsos. While the kneeling firer has been to the Airfix school of pointless posing!

Although one can see in the Cavalry the influence of the master on the pupil, as the sculptor has learnt the both-hands-occupied rule and the sticky-out-stuff rule - Simonetti likes his sword-scabbards askew, coat tails flying, pointy hats, fishing rods, his are complicated figures to tool-up (as we will see in part 4), and the [trainee?] sculptor of the cavalry has clearly learned at Simonetti's side.

These (also 65/75mm) are harder to ascribe as they have little clothing and equipment, but their similarity to other Indians credited to Simonetti suggest these are the maestro's work, they're more naturalistic than the cavalry although it's fair to say the chap running with tomahawk and dagger is a bit of a dancing loon!

They also proved impossible to photograph so I've collaged the best of the flash images and the best of the heightened-contrast no-flash images. We will look at these again in a later post as I managed to purchase them a few months later and have shot them again.

A collection of copies, Fontanini were pirated to the n'th degree in the former British colony of Hong Kong, as well as closer to home, and these are a reasonable sample of those copies.

On the left we have a blow-moulded copy (68/85mm) of one of the Fontanini knights (75/95mm and probably not by Simonetti) usually sold as tourist trinkets at Italian historical sites, castles, museums, that sort of thing, and sometimes styrene in the original.

Next are the very common Chinoiserie premiums, these are copies (and came in several sizes) and while one tends to assume HK as the origin, the smaller ones (55/65mm and unmarked) were mostly issued in France or by French products, so there is a suspicion they may originate in France, although whether with permission is another matter and we'll look at them closer in a future post (part 5).

The larger one is clearly marked HONG KONG and comes in at 95/110mm but is missing his base which would adjust that second numeral, he has also been given a wash of 'antiquing' grey-brown.

The next figure is the most copied/licensed of all the output of Fontanini; the clowns (55/65mm). Again I have loads of the smaller ones in storage as their commonest form is as HK-sourced cake decorations, this one however is A) damaged (broken walking stick) and B) marked CHINA and not very old at all!

Here are Peltro's cast in pewter

The last two are both those older Hong Kong copy cake decorations from the 1970/80's, a dancer (55/65mm) from the ballet set and a rococo/regency lady (45/50mm) of the same set as seen at the top of the page; a forth pose - a gentleman - is found, holding a candle/night-light.

The Men! We have compared the knights before, but putting a few together gives a better guide to the vast range available to anyone choosing to specialise in Fontanini (and their thieves), although were someone to seriously collect the Carrara marble sample figures that someone would need to reinforce the foundations of their property first as their plinths are not light, and there must have been hundreds produced in a dozen sizes and several decorative finishes over the years - a good set of the figures would result in tons of marble!

I'm seriously considering removing the marble samples as the figures come in and saving them up to make some sort of fancy door-step or something . . . but they've all got a hole in? Thinks . . . put round studs in the holes and voila! A heavy-metal 'cut-off', shoe-scrape, door-step . . . genius! 

The Ladies - with a close-up of the little HK cake decoration, I have  a lot more of these in storage; so we may well return to them one day.

It would appear that Hong Kong only copied the one pose in this size Certainly as a hard polystyrene plastic cake decoration you only ever seem to find the one (I have several more in storage), however they were also copied in soft ethylene at the larger size for French premiums . . .

(New rule -If you've stolen images from me

I'll have ten from you)

. . . as we can see here. Actually the girl second from the top of the staircase is also common as an HK copy, but smaller and often without a base, being attached to springs on jewellery boxes, or to a turntable on musical boxes as well as appearing as a 40/45mm cake decoration in gold or silver polyethylene.

Again believed to be the work of Simonetti, they are harder to ascribe as like the Indians above; they are a bit bereft of clothing, but the girl smelling the flowers is the give-away I think!

This is one of the sets where in the larger sizes there are variations in the sculpting, the fully overlapping crossed-hands of the Hong Kong cake decoration being absent from the 70mm premiums, but found with the larger Carrara marble figurines.

The variations in base style in the above image is due to them being cobbled together from more than one set by the same plagiarist who Photoshop'ed my Kellogg's divers into a cocked-hat!

I went to the Plastic Warrior show last month hoping to get a few Fontanini items to add to the growing folder these articles are the result of, and came away with 24 additions, of which this was one! Approximately 45/50mm and in a softer PVC, I think it's from the late 1980's or 1990's and has the new fountain mark we looked at yesterday. This seems to have been part of a reorganisation around 1983, as Simonetti started to take a more part-time/contract role in the firm he'd been with for 40+ years.

The nativity figures (from which this cow comes) were the bread & butter of Fontanini's output, and were issued in various sizes and vast numbers, with individual sculpts being retired and replaced with similar sculpts on a regular basis. There are a dozen or more Three Kings/Wise Men both mounted on camels and on foot, along with a kneeling trio, by the time you add the size variations, you could indulge in a cameo collection of just wise men!

Part 3 - Napoleonics next.

F is for Fontanini - Part 1 - Introduction

A surprisingly unsung company given that I would rate them with Britains, Elastolin, Marx or Airfix for their importance to the history of toy figures (in composition, plastic and resin); for the variety of their output, their connections to other companies with premium licenses, sculpt-swaps and shared output through the farming-out of their chief [and other] sculptor [/s] and through the wide range of their products blatantly pirated (as Garratt puts it) in Hong Kong in the 1960's and 1970's.

They pretty well got everywhere, tourist traps; breakfast cereals and coffee, washing-powders and cake decorations; high-end collectables and Hong Kong carded rack-toys, yet because they were never really a dedicated 'toy soldier' maker, you may have crossed their path without even knowing it.

Still-going; in the hills to the North of Florence and Pisa famous for the production of Presepi Artistici or nativity (Crèche, Krip[pen]) figures, they share the location with Marchi & Figli (Marchi and Sons) who (about the same time Fontanini were opening the Fonplast works) set up ISAS for their toy production, the four sites as good as filling the valley with figure production - both on the four main sites; and in all the little villages around the region where the (mostly female) out-workers completed the painting and finishing of orders.

Marchi came second (1930's) and are now (having re-absorbed ISAS and stopped the rack-toy production) known as Euromarchi while Fontanini set-up in 1908 and are now mostly making poured resin models for their main partner (and marketing guru's) in the US, Roman Inc; who have generated a whole fan-base of bible-belt and suburban 'soccer-mom' collectors with their own web-sites and forums, like Bradford Exchange, Danbury or Franklin Mint collectors!

Both companies are also now run by the forth generations of their families, and it was under the third generation of Fontanini's that Fonplast was set-up in 1963 to manufacture plastic figures in volume as the older ranges were phased-out.

Now: to the English-speaker it's probably easier to say that those older ranges were composition; however, some sources (including the current Fontanini) translate some of the early production as being papier mâché, others as 'plaster' or plaster-covered papier mâché, while in 1951/2 they were registering groups of figurine designs (from 6 to 13 inches high) with the US Library of Congress as 'ceramic', so the picture is not entirely clear.

Certainly though; we know they made composition figurines of the Elastolin/Lineol type between the wars and through to the 1960's until the switch to plastic.

Away from the Nativity ranges and limited dips in the toy market, Fontanini are best known (or instantly recognised - once you know what you're looking at) for their larger mouldings, supplied in various finishes to the tourist trade in Carrara and the surrounding regions, where they are affixed to a block or tile of 'sample' marble, for sale as mementos of a trip to the region, Fontanini's own plastic-based statuettes being sold more widely around/elsewhere in Italy in the same vein.

It is sure that Elio Simonetti (who joined the company after the second World War, and not Emilo!) and the other sculptors at Fontanini worked with the tourist trade to produce figurines they thought would sell, and that they also worked with the Val Pelro (valley of lead, or 'lead valley') metal foundry where much cross-over or cross-pollination existed, while his work with Cané ('canine' or dog) between 1971 and 1975 was almost certainly with the blessing of the Fontanini's and probably to the financial gain of Fontanini/Fonplast.

As can be seen on the map these firms were all relatively near each other, and Ferrero who would produce small-scale, die-cast copies of many of the Fontanini, Cane and/or and Peltro sculpts (along with the much pirated Lone Star 'Metallion' sculpts - also Simonetti's work) in their chocolate Kinder Eggs, set-up in the 1970's in the same Northern-Italian 'neighbourhood'.

The fact that the Cowboys and Indians of all the above named resemble the Marx sets is probably because Simonetti designed them too, and I wouldn't mind betting (this was all happening in the late 1960's/early 1970's) that he got the gig through Roman in the US who were on the scene by then, but A) I'm getting ahead of myself, and B) it's my own thoughts - so treat it with a pinch of salt.

Markings are many and varied with Fontanini and can lead to confusion, some of the older members of the hobby will tell apocryphal stories of people coming up to them at shows and announcing that they've "...found a new company; Depose!", while the logo is itself problematical, or at least: it was; it's now been replaced with a graphic of a fountain.

On the left we see an image of a typical base mark on one of the larger statuettes with the Depose Italy (registered [in] Italy) a mould-tool/stock number and the logo, along with the standard Carrara marble's self-adhesive, chrome-metallised, paper (later: vinyl-plastic) label.

On the right - a close up of 'That Mark'. Now - the company themselves tell a tale of papier mâché toy spiders, most people - now - refer to it as a spider -despite the lack of legs being present in the correct number, Garratt thought it was representing a crab, for which job it is lacking the prerequisite claws while I think it looks more like a sheep-keg or blood-sucking, burrowing tick before it's fed (although they have eight legs too!), and on some toys it (the logo) looks to have only four legs and two antennae!

I suspect it was originally meant to be a beetle; clockwork, hand-powered or spring-loaded automata of walking beetles (usually painted-up as ladybirds/ladybugs) were common, popular playthings between the wars in wood, tin-plate or composition and if they were making spiders, they were probably making more beetles, spiders being less popular?

Whatever the truth, it is considered to be a spider now, was present (usually on the base underside) from the early composition figures through to the mid-1980's or even early-1990's and has now been replaced, yet without a full explanation as to why - why would you replace a logo which was over 70 years old and instantly recognisable?

On the left - a late vinyl cow from the 1980's onwards (it could be quite recent, I don't follow the Roman Inc. era stuff closely) with a cloudy blob for the fountain, a full 'Fontanini', a copyright ©-mark and 'Italy'.

On the right - the plain 'Italy' mark of the Fonplast figures from a short lived attempt at a slice of the 'Toy Soldier' market. Someone (guess who!) has been trying to pass these off as being from a company called err . . . Italy, quite vociferously, in recent months, in various grubby corners of the internet, but he tends to make stuff up as he goes along and is best ignored in his pontificating.

Other marks (along with any cavity/stock numbers and/or 'spider') can include any combination of the above and/or including:

• 'Dep. ITALY'
• 'DEPOSE'
• 'Depose Italy'
• 'Depositato Italy'
• 'Fontanini'
• 'ITALY'
• 'MADE IN ITALY'

Variations in base/plinth attachment with an all-hard polystyrene plastic combination on the left and a vinyl (PCV) figure to polyethylene plinth pairing on the right.

There was a limited use of both styrene and ethylene from time to time or with certain sets (possibly from the old Fontanini facility up the road at Bagni de Lucca?), but most of the 'classic' Fontanini/Fonplast production circa 1965-1985 was in a very dense PVC which takes a lot of punishment some (softer batches) coming across as ethylene on casual inspection, some cured so hard it can be mistaken for styrene - this would have been from the Chifenti Fonplast works - down the road!

The flexibility and 'give' of PVC also takes an old-fashioned, slotted wood-screw far better than either polystyrene or polyethylene would have, which made the fixing of a plastic figure to a chunk of the planet's harder surface material a lot less problematical!

Spirit-based glue was also applied to the join between the figure's integral-base and the additional plinth; to prevent the figure coming loose easily under the scrutiny of small, inquisitive, juvenile fingers back in the tourist's home location.

"Ah-Harrrh Jim-ladd ! Oi's bee wiseerrh noww! . . .

. . . Oi's bee Farnt'aaan'innii!"

Next - we'll look at the figure types using my rather small sample - no internet images here and I'm not copying it all out of someone-else's book!

P is for Picasa Clearance

I think we've had that title before and we will definitely have it again! I keep muttering about clearing stuff from Picasa but I keep adding to it, not just article folders but the 'other images' folder which had just under 500 shots a few weeks ago and now stands at 700+. A lot of it is shite, but here's some I can clear as a random post, alphabetically;

Britains

Simple shot of Hong Kong produced Britains cowboys, showing some of the colour/base variations in the Herald range - note that the orange one (they all seem to be wearing mechanic's overalls!) has only detailing  three paint colours (black, silver, flesh) while the other two poses manage four each with the neckerchife blobbed-in, in yellow.

Charbens

Thanks to Paul Morehead at Plastic Warrior for ID'ing these for me the other day, I'd scoured the PW 'specials' I have here and checked various websites, but of course my Charbens special (for that is who they are by) is the old B&W one in storage - Paul came to the rescue the other day. From my attempts to find him I'd say he's not too common?

Cofalux

I don't know what these Cofalux are doing in Picasa as we looked at them before everything went into storage, I think they must be latecommers from Samwise/Pascal? I like these French 'bazar' figures (because they are sold in bazaars), they have something of a cross between US production (seen in the UK through Marx or Thomas) and Hong Kong rack toys.

Hornby-Meccano

A Hornby rail-staff figure repainted to represent some fat, rear-echelon, staff-donkey; ready to send a hundred-thousand lions into a hailstorm of Ruhr-moulded lead, at walking pace!

JB Models - now Airfix

Ah, yes; "Would you like a model kit with that fresh-air, Sir?" - The other kind of 'box scale', not an odd-scaled ship or aircraft designed to fit the box size, but a box design resolutely happy to be filled with 5/6ths atmosphere! I don't think they were 'US' either; it's an Australian expediency-design born pout of marrying the turrets of retired Saladin armoured cars with M113 APC's to provide a bit of oomph in Vietnam, which it did quite well I think, albeit while being a bit top-heavy.

Lucky-Giant-Helen of Toy (and others!)

Scans of old photographs that never got used in One Inch Warrior magazine, one of each pose, both colours, err . . .  That's it! Comic offers in the US, they replaced earlier flats.

Norev

Plastic fire engine (dusty) with figures, there should be four outriders, two are missing and one was wedged in the delicate plastic ladder and I wasn't going to force him. Also you have to ask why they are riding outside when they have a lovely crew-cab with two bench seats!

Italian Texas Indian on the left

German bubble-gum premium on the right

All covered before, two random Euro-figures closing a random figure post - call it 'magazine Sunday'! Tomorrow we start a short season.

K is for Kickabout

From yesterdays sublime to today's frankly faintly ridiculous, but they all have a place in the small scale world!

First seen in the spring, the new in-house branding of Funworkz or Fun Workz as it is here has now featured three times in these pages I think? Aimed at kids it's really an executive 'desk toy' and as such; just the sort of thing we can give ourselves permission to buy - especially at a quid a pop! Mr Trump seems determined to end the world early, so enjoy what you can while you can . . .

. . . with a little kickabout on the desk or coffee table! The four traffic cones supplied with the set allow for a penalty shoot-out with a mate, offspring or partner, while a bit of chicanery is the solo opption. A bit of practice might allow for keepie-uppie using the player as a bat?

Having only recently qualified in CAD myself, I can tell you that this is all the money in the bag as far as development costs go, and it's a beautiful solution to the problem posed; wanting the black hexagons and white pentagons to be made out of the different two colours rather than painted on or hinted-at in the moulding (like old gum-ball or Subbuteo balls), it's basically an 'Iwako eraser' married to a jig-toy/puzzle!

While complicated to CAD-up, it's a simple exercise in geometry, but it would take a day or two (like that bloody Dalek's head!) to get right as you have to build it out of polygonal-cones, then work out which ones will be white, which black, the subtract or union the two groups into the main five final-sections, then deal with the unseen interior, cutting-up and awarding that space to the different sections and then work out how to hold them all together with the two plugs - I would have loved to watch this going through its development!

EG is for Ezio Guggiari (EG Toys)

Not really a 'box-ticker', as it's an unusual firm, but I doubt we'll ever return to it here, so therefore definitely ticking a box! We learn from Bassetterre (via Garratt) that EG Toys made plastics after 1960,  and having looked at a few Argentine plastics last week I thought it fortuitous to get the chance to shoot these at Sandown last weekend.

A bunch of Gauchos chillin' by the camp fire, maybe singing a song about a pretty lady, waiting back in somewhere for them? . . .

. . . No! They're singing something altogether more raucous and the cook's put down her pans to step-out with the head honcho, givin' it large! Add the Timpo 'Camp-fire' vignette and you can have a real ho-down - or a play-off!

There are a few more poses in Garratt's The World Encyclopedia of Model Soldiers, along with a few accessories while there's more here from Diago and here from Alberto in colour with potted histories of the company for Spanish Speakers and a more general Blog has a piece on them here. If you want some, try here - but they're not cheap - if the Navy is the 'Senior Service', then hollow-cast and solid lead is definitely the 'Senior Branch' of our hobby!

L is for Lazy

I've been here for hours doing other stuff and now I've run out of time to post what I was thinking of posting so this'll have to do, a box ticker we've looked at before, but there you go, something better tomorrow if I get my arse into gear!

Timpo Swoppet WWII 54mm British machinegun