Unknown drummer

Another find at last weekend's PW show was this 16th century? drummer, made in France but I'm not sure who the manufacturer was. He's lost 99% of his paint and there is always a temptation to repaint figures in this condition, I'm undecided on this course of action at present.

A Bolshevik Tachanka

This horse drawn machine gun cart known as a Tachanka is part of an extensive set of semi flat plastic toy soldiers made in the old USSR to depict the Russian Civil War.

Wendal mounted trumpeter.

This mounted trumpeter of the Household Cavalry was given to me in 1960, it may not have been the very first toy soldier I ever owned but it is certainly the one that has remained in my possession the longest. It was made in England by Wendal (Wendover Aluminium), it is aluminium and is 54mm.

 Aluminium figures were very popular in post-war France but never really caught on elsewhere, the only exceptions I can think of are Krolyn of Denmark who made copies of Elastolin as well as some original designs in this material and Wendal who made copies of Quiralux figures. Quiralux were the market leaders in manufacturing aluminium toy soldiers in France.

Wendal also made original figures of British subjects such as this trumpeter from a set of the full mounted band of the Household Cavalry, while there is little appetite for them amongst English collectors they are particularly sought after by the French because they offer something unusual that wasn't available in France.

Aluminium figures are made by slush casting, a process whereby the master model is pressed into compacted damp sand, then removed and the molten aluminium is poured into the resulting cavity. To make a two part mould the sand is packed into two steel trays which are then "sandwiched" around the master model. When I was at school we used to do slush casting in metalwork lessons, no health and safety worries back then! 

The limitations of this casting process means that aluminium toy soldiers tend to be less animated and detailed than those made in other mediums, although very robust the material is also brittle and will break but is easily repaired with superglue. When they are stored loosely in a box they will tend to loose virtually all of their paint which has led to a trend among modern collectors to repaint them and I have to admit the results are usually a big improvement, 

Napoleonic infantryman made in Poland by PZG the Polish Association of the Deaf.

This is the last of the collectable figures I picked up at last week's PW show, not a large haul considering the amount of esoteric stuff there to be had but the truth is that before very long I started to suffer from toy soldier overload and became incapable of rational thought. I had taken a shopping list to the show, mostly items I wanted for conversions to supplement the armies I'm building for the "Funny Little Wars" project but immediately abandoned that and bought up stuff that was totally off list.

This figure was made in Poland, by PZG (Polski Zwiacek Gluchych), the Polish Union for the Deaf, who ran workshops manufacturing all manner of things to raise money for deaf people. The organisation still exists today but no longer makes toy soldiers, this example is 54mm plastic. Collector Jim Lloyd is probably the leading exponent of PZG figures in Western Europe and has a website well worth looking at here.

Conte American Civil War infantry Officers

These are two new(ish) figures of personalities from the American Civil War made in the USA recently by Conte (I say made in the USA because the commissioning company is American but on the base it clearly states that they were actually made in China, as most things are these days). I bought these with the intention of converting them to officers circa 1905 for my Funny Little Wars Russian wargames army. They are a tad large to go with the rest of the figures they are supposed to lead, being about 60mm scale but we might get away with it.