F is for Fontanini - Part 5 - Chinoiserie; the Oriental or Asian Statuettes

Firstly a big thanks to Cristianu Hardy ('Ludoprimophile' on the Forums) without whom this post would be a very complicated text-heavy, hard to follow affair with few images! He kindly allowed me to use scans of his original web-posts from ten and more years ago, to illustrate the points/figures as we go.

They have been taken from word.doc documents - as the links from his homepage have become problematical over the years - so are low-resolution, and I've filled the gaps so they are a bit mixed-up. As you'll see lower down, these are a mess really (not on Cristianu's original pages - I hasten to add), as over the years people have added figures to the wrong sets, swapped bases to fill gaps in their collections and not properly annotated the changes, or the finds, so try to ignore the bases until you get to the bottom of the post, where hopefully it will all start to make sense!

Cristianu's website seems to be still viewable from the sub-sections; Elephas Maximus (Andrew) on STS recently found a working bookmark to the animal section, and the home page may still work on older machines, but newer ones won't allow the old Windows Frontpage coding to work; specifically the 'fphover' button hot-links on the homepage.

If you have working links/bookmarks to any of the other sections/sub-sections, let me know and I'll do a post with them on, which can be linked to the original link (top right) through tags. In the meantime the animals are here.

I'll kill the myths at the start

Chinese 'Dog of Fu' (pronounced foe)

or lion guard, carved in celadon jade

Myth 1 - They are 'Chinese' sculptures

The common mistake (going back to Fontanini's original issues) is of calling them Chinese (chinois), they are not necessarily Chinese in origin or particular influence, and definitely not in style and while some of the characters depicted are clearly of Chinese dress or origin, others aren't.

All original Chinese sculptural figurines whether plain or stained (pigmented) soapstone, the harder celadon-jades, 'Blanks' (or 'Blanc de Meudon' - white glazed porcelain), Famille Rose & Famille Verte (porcelain decorated in the Western style) or the carved bamboo (often lacquered in reddish-brown to give the appearance of an almost plastic finish), are in - or tend toward - an anatomically rounded or fuller (well-fed) style; as are most Japanese Satsuma figures, no . . . the output of Fontanini (and their copyists) we are looking at with the 'oriental' sculpts are actually aping Japanese Okimono ivories or bronzes. Chinese Tang-ware is older and more stylised sculpture - you may be familiar with the painted pottery horses, or think of the Terracotta Army.

But back to Okimono - they ape them well; both to the caricature aspect and taller slimmer styling and with the fact that they were originally produced by Fontanini in various shades of white and cream plastic, sometimes wash-stained to mimic aged ivory.

A set of six early Fontnini sculpts are to be found here.

Further complications come from the fact that some characters have several conflicting stories with origins in fact and/or fantasy. They can have up to four spellings of a Chinese name, another Indian (Sanskrit?) name and/or several alternate names - with subsequent spelling variations. Characters can move between myths, fairy-stories and history rather too fluidly and several religions (Buddhism, Dao/Taoism, Hinduism, Sikhism and Japanese Shinto) claim several of the characters - for different reasons.

(thanks to Peter Fox for letting me shoot these)

These are Chinese in influence (and origin?) and may even be Fontanini, but I am not aware of them being such, have no evidence of such, and firmly believe them to be Hong Kong tourist figures, which do ape the 'Blanc de Moudon' figurines from China - the reason for their inclusion here; you can see they are after a very different style, like Fontanini however, they are an 'ivorene' plastic, antiqued with a dark-grey wash, worked into the incised detailing.

However, as well as priestly personages or religious deities, Okimono are known for both their depictions of occupational/craftspeople and/or 'everyday' subject matter as well as for - specifically - figures with fish, and this set has five or six fish or fishing related poses, another sign of its Japanese or part-Japanese origins.

Within the figures below are Gods, priests, rural craftspeople, classic tourist tropes, a couple of possible known characters, some dancers and - hiding among them - Kinder's apparent made-up-names, several of whom have parallels in the stories of old! And one must also bear in mind that culturally speaking; China, Japan, pre-Mogul India and others in the region were closer once, than they maybe now.

One figurine looks more Siamese (modern day Thailand); the female dancer in a tall hat, another looks more Indo-Asian; the chap with his arms folder and having a large sword hung at his waist, while two do have very Chinese-looking top-knot hairpieces (striking octopus tentacles with a sword and playing flute), but such hair was worn by the Japanese too, while the chap with an alligator/crocodile (salt water?) is a known Japanese tourist thing. So the jury's still out on this one, but not Chinese overall, maybe 50/50?

It would be easier and more accurate if everyone could get in the habit of calling them the Fontanini 'Oriental' or Asian figurines!

My two (I have a bunch of similar figures in storage), both sourced in the UK and therefore possibly Lyons Tea? They are very rough, poorly finished versions of the Fontanini originals, with no sign of having had a plinth, while the integral bases are crude and misshapen.

Myth 2 - They represent the 'Immortals' or other specific groups

Several commentators have tried to tie the 8 Daoist (Taoist) 'Immortals' or even the 18 Lohan characters into these 'sets' [see Myth 3 below], but only three of them pass muster as such characters - and then only barely!

The guy holding a 'dragon' fish as tall as himself over his shoulder could (and only 'could') be either a 'Lung-man' (with a sturgeon) at the Dragons Gate from Chinese mythology or Pan-t'o-chia (Panthaka in Sanskrit?) the 10th Lohan who charmed a Dragon, while the man with a feathered fan could (again; 'could') be interpreted as Chung-li Ch'uan (Zhongli Quan)- one of the eight immortals, or Chu-ch'a Pan-t'o-chia (Chota Panthaka) the 16th Lohan. Of the women - the lady holding a bunch of flowers can be taken as Ho Hsien-ku (He Xian'gu) with her lotus, one of the Eight Immortals? Yet the flowers - as modelled - don't look like lotus blooms, let alone a single 'magic' lotus - so it's a stretch to take her thus.

Six of the characters have been given Chinese names on one or two websites, but these seem to be the names awarded them by Kinder in their set of diminutive, die-cast copies, which came late to the oeuvre and I can't find them in Derek Walters' Chinese Mythology, the book I've been working from.

Google revealed that two may be taken from The Water Margin, with one also having the further choice of being mythical or an Empress, while another could choose between a scholar or a Prince; the other three drew a blank, so I guess - as a group - they may be fictional 'Chinese' Ferrero-names, with some happening to be common enough names to attribute by random happenstance!

Likewise, the various premium issues in France gave their sets Chinese titles (Chinese Occupations, Chinese Saga's etc...), but with some Fontanini-sourced exceptions, these are or can be crude copies, possibly from Hong Kong (they mostly aren't marked) and pull various poses from the larger range of original sculpts with little or no sense of order. Mir (washing powder) went with "Chinese Statuettes".

Myth 3 - That these are all made by Fontanini*

While you can call it 'a' set (the whole line/range), they seem to have been designed/used for issuing in pairs, sixes, twelves or eighteens with more than 34 sculpts - that I know of - and not every figure was issued in every style or size, at least four (like the Napoleonics) being confined to the larger sizes, another two being re-cut at some point, while one has a mirror-geometry version.

With most of them more easily available to people lucky enough to still be in the EU, that's where the work still needs to be done, to find out which sets in which sizes were supplied by Fontanini, copied by someone else (who? With or without a license from Fontanini? Where?), or sourced from Hong Kong.

Although it's equally likely some may have been sourced closer to home - the number issued by French or French-based companies suggest France, but if they were unlicensed it's likely somewhere more lawless like Yugoslavia or even a factory beyond the 'Euro' law of the time; maybe Spain, might be in the frame?

*Not really a 'myth' as I don't think anyone's claimed them all 'made by' Fontanini, but the origin of manufacture is questionable for the bulk of them, also while they are all originally Fontanini sculpts, a few of them have been taken directly from the Japanese Okimono originals.

My recent purchase (95/110mm; higher number is guesswork due to absence of plinth), cleaned-up and perched temporarily on a knights plinth - he is clearly marked HONG KONG MADE IN on his kilt-hem - possibly a UK-issued Lyons Tea figure?

In both cases (the various premiums or the later Ferrero/Kinder issue), we are talking throwaway playthings aimed at younger children, and just as one talks of 'Chinoiserie' in English when talking about things which may be Japanese, Thai, Burmese, Vietnamese or Korean, so I suspect these figures ended-up 'Chinese' through a combination of laziness, ignorance and a lack of a need to care terribly how accurate the moniker was.

First appearing in the 1960's, from Fontanini they were quite striking figurines, especially in the larger sizes, with various shades of faux-ivory (white, cream and pinkish shades) polythene (PE) they were later made in the same dense vinyl (PVC) as the rest of the Fonplast work's output and found their way onto Carrara marble sample blocks/tiles for tourists to take home - all over the world.

Ageing/antiquing was applied with washes in black, brown, dark gray or an oxide red-brown, and these often prove to be water-soluble so on tatty examples can be removed easily to clean the figure up. This is true for all Fontanini, Premium and marked HONG KONG versions in the larger sizes, but not always for the smaller sizes.

Now, the various sets of premiums come in two sizes, but different finishes and on several different plinth types, and I can't be too specific with my three here and few in storage, all copies of Fontanini, but not Fontanini! While the Fontanini originals came in at least four or five sizes and with various - more ornate - plinths.

So we will just go through listing them in no particular order (I've blocked them together by subject matter where I can - men first; in an institutionally sexist fashion!), numbering is pointless as different collectors have used different orders/numbers for different sculpts over the years, names/titles are equally pointless for the reasons mentioned at the start - some of them have dozens of 'original' (Asian mythological-) names, others have never been given a name by Fontanini, Kinder or any of the premium issuers, and I don't know the Fontanini cavity numbers - in any size!

The known sculpts (Kinder titles in red) are:

Male Sculpts

Weapons

- Large curved sword across body [Yang Zhi]

- Arms folded, large sword and flame/lions-mane headdress

- Holding large sword over and behind head

- With large bullwhip

- Striking downward with sword (Sculpt only available in larger sizes?)

- Carrying or wrestling an alligator or crocodile, sword hung at waist (Sculpt only available in larger sizes?)

- Striking at octopus legs with large sword (sculpt only available in larger sizes?)

- Running with sword or strap in right hand, rice lunch-box in left (Sculpt only available in larger sizes?)

The guys with bull-whip and crossed-arms both look to be from more exotic Asian countries, Thai or Siamese maybe, while a lady from the Oriental Ceramics Society (OCS) informed me the alligator/crocodile fighter/carrier is a popular Japanese tourist piece? Conversely the man wrestling three octopus tentacles is clearly very Chinese!

Fish or Fishing Related

- Basket of Fish, throwing carp over shoulder [Zhang Shun]

- Giant 'Dragon' fish (or Catfish?)

- Large carp counter-balancing basket of fish over shoulder pole/yolk

- Giant carp in right hand, fishing rod in left (sculpt only available in larger sizes?)

Again as a grouping these represent a very popular Japanese trope, but fish are also associated with various characters from the myths and legends of the whole pan-Asia region.

The guy on the right has a different base to mine; squared-off and may be a Fontanini original from a larger set - all the figures with the more ornate pierced-plinths are to be taken as such.

Others

- Playing flute, long top-knot

- Two fans

- With a hood/pack on his back

- Wagging finger and stroking his beard

- With fan [Song Jan]

- Holding a bird and a pipe (Sculpt only available in larger sizes?)

A similar sculpt to the flute player but with a sword was issued as a pirate in the smaller, painted, PVC set by Fontanini.

The last two on the right might/could be from the 8 Immortals or the Lohan, but their 'signatures' aren't clear enough, one is known for having his fat belly on show, another for being learned, but he should be carrying a book, which would look more like a box to our eyes.

Female Sculpts - Vase holding variants

- Low vase - no crown

- Low vase - crown

- High vase - no crown

- High vase - with crown

Are those with finer detailing from Fontanini, the others copies? Note that with the right-hand pair the vase differs, as does the holding forearm, the first figure having no lid and a heavier forearm.

Others

- Crowned dancer

- Holding fan up

- Holding folding-fan down [Zhang Shi]

- Shallow baskets on yolk

Was the first one (Thai/Siamese?) issued as a pair with the crowned chap holding a sword? A variation exists of the second girl, with the whole figure bending/glancing the opposite ways to the figure above.

- With flowers [Jiu Tiun Xuan]

- Balls or parcels on a pole/yolk [Pan Qiao Yun]

- Playing small lyre

- Playing large lyre

- Bird resting on a pole over shoulder

- Tai/Siamese dancer with dragon

- Holding open-sieve or pearl-diving basket? (Sculpt only available in larger sizes)

- With fishing rod and fish on board (Sculpt only available in larger sizes)

- Bird on branch, stick in left hand, simple shift/dress (Sculpt only available in larger sizes)

- Playing harp (Sculpt only available in larger sizes?)

Was the fishing-rod lady paired with the similarly equipped male sculpt? The pearl-diver could be Polynesian - if that is what she is representing? When I first found the Harpist I thought it was one of Fontanini's Christmas/nativity angels, but she clearly has an Oriental hair-style.

In total - 34 poses, 37 sculpts (that I know of).

Premium Sets

This is the pose layout/pose count for the smaller premiums although some larger ones have been used to fill the gaps in Cristianu's original line-up and a couple have the wrong bases but right plinth (yellow dots). The green dots are figures with the better bases (arched-filigree edged hexagonal drums), the red dots are of poorer finish (beaded edges) like my two above.

Some issuers released these in three tranches of 6 figures which seems to explain the red dots; different source? They also seem the commoner poses - from what I can tell!

65mm 70mm (65/85mm)

Hegaxonal 'tablet' Plinths

Body - Cosmetics (UK)

Café Maurice - Coffee

Café Scarpia - Coffee

Lutin - Haberdashers

Mir 'Nylon' - Washing Powder

Pur Crem - Cheese

Oval 'basin' Plinths

Café Damoy - Coffee

Café Mokaden - Coffee

Grosjean - Cheese Spread

Unmarked (3 bars) - Unknown

Veuve Amiot - Sparkling Wines

No Plinth

Montblanc - Dairy Products

Cristianu's original larger set rearranged to fit the page for a screen-shot with alternate versions of the high-hold jar lady; again sometimes issued in two tranches of 6 poses.

90mm (80/100mm)

Crenellated Plinths

Cafes Maurice - Coffee

Lutin - Haberdashers

Rectangular or Wood-look Plinths

Axion - Washing Powder

Café Damoy - Coffee

Geigy Agchim - Agri-chemicals (UK: CIBA-Geigy)

Laden - Household/Domestic Appliances

Thé Lyons - Tea (UK; Lyons Tea?)

Valnoble - Wine

Oval 'basin' Plinths

Mir 'Nylon' - Washing Powder

Three of the products known so far have links to the UK, but with only one known to have issued in the UK (Body Cosmetics), yet the smaller figurines are quite common over here, and with a domestic appliance firm and agri-chemical company issuing them, it may turn out that someone like Hoover or Pifco may have given them away at some point? But - that's thinking out loud - not a fact!

(eight)

Additional-plinth types for the premiums and smaller Fonatini's; larger genuine Fontanini's come with more ornate plinths in several designs (some of which have found their way into the above screen-caps, they are also sometimes found on Carrara marble plinths

For the sake of completion, the actual names of the Eight Immortals (Pa Hsien - the Eight Fairies/Eight Genii), not to be confused with the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup - a bunch of drunken poets! Wikipedia name first, should you wish to dig further - I'm about done on mythological Asian celebrities;

- He Xian'gu - Ho Hsien-ku (female)

- Cao Guojiu - Ts'ao Kuo-chiu - Ts'ao Ching-hsiu

- Li Tieguai - Li T'ieh-Kuai - T'ieh-Kuai Li (Li with the Iron Crutch) - Li Yüan - Mung Mu - Li Ning-yang

- Lan Caihe - Lan Ts'ai-ho (androgen/sex unknown, debateable)

- Lü Dongbin - Lü Tung-pin - Lü Yen - Shung-yang Tzu

- Han Xiangzi - Han Hsiang-tzu - Ch'ing-fu

- Zhang Guolao - Chang-kwo Lao

- Zhongli Quan - Chung-li Ch'üan - Chi Tao - Ho-ho Tzu - Wang-yang Tzu - Yün Fan (Han dynasty)

While a little on the Kinder names;

- Yang Zhi (Sizu - Water Margin character, Eastern Han Dynasty official or EmpressYang Zhi (259–292), Jin Dynasty (265–420))

- Zhang Shun (Water Margin character)

- Song Jan (?)

- Zhang Shi (Prince (died 320, ruler of the Former Liang state during the Sixteen Kingdoms period or Song Dynasty scholar (1133-1181))

- Jiu Tiun Xuan (?)

- Pan Qiao Yun (?)

Rack toys - Bazar figures (severn)

In the course of researching this post I also discovered that the Patron Saint of sodomy is called Chou Wang - I kid you not! It's apotheosised from the last Emperor of the Shang (surly 'shag' - ed.) dynasty who was a tyrannical deviant, with an even more deviant concubine! I love this - do you suppose gays know they have a Patron Saint? Or that he's a wang chewer! It's priceless; someone tell Donald, he might explode with rage and do the world a favour! Whoops! There goes my entry visa!

F is for Fontanini - Part 4 - Fonplast

I'm calling these Fonplast rather than Fontanini because Fontanini had their own range of toy figures, the African natives, pirates and Cowboys & Indians sat next to the smaller versions of the nativity figures in peoples toy boxes - with a full range of Fontanini marks on them - indeed; they tend to have a full set with cavity/stock number, 'spider' mark, 'Depose' and 'Italy', while these only have a paltry 'Italy'.

However, there are various clues as to the fact that they came from Fonplast, not least is that no one else in Italy was producing Elio Simonetti designed figures, in dense, flesh-pink, PVC-vinyl, while Fonplast was producing all the PVC-vinyl, flesh-pink, dense, figures designed by Elio Simonetti . . . for Fontanini - who owned Fonplast!

A set of Turkic warriors of the early Ottoman Empire era, similar to but not the same as those carried by Cané, copied from Elastolin, as Simonetti was working for Cané at the time, and Fontanini were letting them copy their Vikings while they (Cané) were borrowing their number-one sculptor, it's possible that the figures were designed by Simonetti for Elastolin, they are very different to other Elastolin stuff, and follow Simonetti's styling; and that he gave permission for Cané to reproduce them, as 'rack toys' in another (Italian) market.

Whatever the truth, it seems Fontanini didn't have a set of Turks otherwise? Now; when the grand children of Emanuele Fontanini set-up Fonplast in 1963, they would have needed to practice on something and practising with the composition figures still being made by Fontanini a few miles up the valley would have been daft, impractical and technically impossible. I think these figures, which are quite uncommon, indeed - were hardly known until a number of undecorated castings appeared recently - are those 'practice' pieces.

Described by some as ACW and others as Garibaldini, the presence of a lasso/lariat suggests these are meant to be US cavalry, to fight the set of Indians below. I'd like to say Custer's 7th, but what looks like a 7 in the image above is actually a star on the guidon.

It would appear that before (or as) they were tooling-up to produce for Fontanini, the Fonplast factory experimented with a cash-earner; a small range of 'Toy Soldiers', which are the figures seen here. I don't know how successful they were, but the fact that they seem so hard to find (excepting the recent find) would suggest they didn't take of - or even happen; commercially - see below.

There's a pose missing if they were all in sixes? Also apart from the above three sets, I am aware of no others, but the Turks would have needed an 'enemy'?

They don't have the more domed bases of Fontanini either, even the little 40mm 'Zulus' had the grass-etched dome of the rustics/nativity figures. These have a very commercial looking 'toy' figure's flat base.

But the older-looking packaging of both the African warriors and the pirates contain soft-plastic polyethylene figures, with the painted, vinyl figures apparently coming later (from the same moulds). If we assume the early experiments with other plastics (styrene and ethylene) were carried out up the road by Fontanini, that makes sense, with Fonplast not handling them (the moulds) until they were up and running with the PVC production, they were actually set-up to engage in.

The smaller-scale, factory-painted figures - Africans, the pirates, Cowboys & Indians and rural/pastoral types - were still being sold in the UK as cake-decorations from point-of-sale stock-boxes in the late 1980's, while the 'antiqued' white or cream polyethylene ones were much earlier.

Another clue as to the origin and fate of these figures is seen here; there is in this recent find - which I'm lead to understand was part of a bigger find in Italy - of otherwise near-mint, finely manufactured figures, clear signs of short-shot and heat problems with the moulding.

These are three of the Indians, but problems are also evident on the cavalry and I wasn't checking as I chose the figures from a larger sample, so I don't know how many of the figures in total had problems, but it seems to be about a quarter of the total?

Having worked with an plastic-moulding machine (lower pressure extrusions not high-pressure injection-moulds) my first thought was that it was problems with foreign-bodies on the injector-head, the blackening is usually a sign that something has got stuck to the inside of the nozzle, over-cooked and is contaminating the new resin as it flows over the contaminant . . .

. . . however, all the gate marks are at the tops of the figures, so that explanation doesn't fit.

The holes (on the left above is a similar blemish on one of the Turks) are simply where the plastic has got too cool to finish filling the cavity, something which is easier to understand when you realise the figure concerned was to be filled from the sword blade at the other end - I'm not sure which is the gate mark and which is a jigget, or if they are both gate-marks but I have highlighted them both anyway.

Of course trying to fill a large (65/75mm figure) cavity from a small opening at the opposite end was going to be problematical and while the blackening remains a mystery, the evidence is that all did not go well in the manufacture of these figures and with most of the obvious problems on the bases - as far away from the injector head as it was possible to get - I think these were an over-ambitious, sprue-gate too small, first try?

Finally; while this recent find is in a condition anyone who's seen them will tell you is 'near mint', there are signs that prior to being released to the market in the last year or so, they have been cleaned, and cleaned of a thick layer of dust, the sort of dust which has aged to a layer of fine, greasy, soil on the figures.

These figures appear to have been in storage, as an unpainted, slightly damaged, stock of 'seconds', for a long time - probably since they were made. As - to my knowledge (and I don't know everything!) - the 'firsts' haven't been seen either, I propose as a theory that they never got a full commercial release at the time, although some may have dripped into the world from out-painters, or via the children of Fontanini/Fonplast factory workers?

And that these 'seconds' are it; the 'firsts', the survivors of a trail run, failed experiments with a new technology, pulled-line, whatever - there's a story there still to be discovered. One thing I'm sure about, they are Fonplast and/or Fontanini, not some spurious company called Italy!

How many companies in the UK marked their figures 'England' or 'Made in England'; how many French companies marked 'France'; German companies 'Germany' or 'W. Germany' and err . . . Italian companies 'Italy'.

The idea that 'he who makes things up as he goes along' should think to invent another company; 'Italy-Dus'(it's his second this year - DGN post coming soon!) on such flimsy evidence as a base mark is extraordinary, that people are swallowing his guff is more so, especially when he's taking what he's publishing from other people's books - and happily admitting it as he regurgitates it, with errors, yet without proper credit!

PS - Don't forget it's the London Toy Soldier show tomorrow.

Stadswatch - Yawn!

This post is an unintended interlude in the current Fontanini season!

With reference to yesterday's post on fuckwits united's blog [http://www.stadsstuff.com/?p=9487]

Errr . . . no I didn't

 I said "some sources" which I chose not to name/link to as they are probably making genuine mistakes not the 24-carat bullshit that comes from the PSTSM.

And I said "may have" as I wasn't sure, don't know and was 'throwing it out there' to cover all the bases!

What they hate is that they first spelt Elio wrong in this [http://www.stadsstuff.com/?p=9229] post and then when I deliberately corrected them with another incorrect name (Elli), went and adjusted theirs to a third (Emilo)! Before getting it back to where it should have been all along! I was both playing with them and proving the 'shadowing', but that's for another post.

I should add that despite the gushing praise from some PSTSM'ers in the comments, the [Cané] thread as good as admits to being stolen from other peoples books and then plagiarises a whole bunch of internet images!

It's getting too funny, have you read yesterday's post, apoplectic with rage at nothing he was, inventing reasons for hysterical bile he is! Shadowing the Small Scale World; he can't deny, turning to the Dark Side, is the Jabbering Fuck.

S'Hammertime!

Whatever - why don't you tell us about DGN again! I'm gonna' do a whole post on them once we've got other things out of the way here at Small Scale World . . . well, when I say I'm gonna' do a whole post on them; I mean I'm gonna' do a whole post on your pontificating about them!

What has come out of Mr. Stadinger's latest saliva-flecked rant is that Mr. Lemmon is probably the influenced rather than the influencer, as Simonetti had established his style long before all these figures were produced, whoever produced them (the wild west sculpts) first!

More fakery! yesterday on the left, today (8th June) on the right, well fancy that! The Hammer and Carbonel show! 

They've also added more text, taking my words out of context, I'll deal with it when I've dealt with everything else in the queue! On the bright side - between them they've finally started spelling Baravelli correctly, the constant references to 'Barabelli' by 'he who makes it up as he goes along' were becoming so tiresome as to be not worth reporting, all over the internet for over a year now, Barabelli, Barabelli, Barabelli!!!

'Probably', within the context of my previous comments, and I wasn't talking about Marx (except in passing) it was about Roman Inc. and Fontanini; their dates tie - Marx's dates are spurious? They are too dumb. The "...biggest fairy tale of the month for our hobby..." is not this storm in a tea-cup they are trying to whip up with their little-fingers; but that Mr. hammer and Mr. Carbonel ever worked for Airfix, or was it Barabelli? Thick as pig-shit - the pair of them.

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!