The past is another country

Tumbling dice20mm; foundry28mm; minifig S; Emhar plastic; Stadden 25m

While I have been idling the New Year away, I am glad to say that others have been busy. I have particularly enjoyed the number of blogs dealing with two of my favorite nostalgia's 20mm figures and the mid nineteenth century. When the two come together then my cup runneth over.

Hinton Hunt; Minifig S cossack(both Napoleonic) Stadden 25mm

I was blessed last year, while helping sort the coach house at Asquith Towers we moved several boxes of Romanov porcelain and underneath found a long forgotten Crimean army in 20mm. With his customary old world generosity Stuart Asquith airily waved them towards my car boot and I found I was the ownerof a lovely collection of mainly S range minifigs. I knew I would never get a better Christmas present so I saved them till Christmas morning before unpacking.

Kennington 20mm ACW(my Painting) ; Hinton Hunt (I am reliably informed)

I have two small but perfectly usable armies of Russian and British with a few Turkish. But of course we can never just leave it at that can we? So I have a two pronged plan in place. Firstly I shall continue to collect where ever possible the original 20mm ranges. Minifig, Hinton Hunt, Douglas etc. That will be a slow process of picking up a figure or two as and when. But also I shall expand the armies with compatible figures still in production.

Foundry 28mm; Minifig S range ; Stadden 25m

So finally I get to the point of this post and the project, what does compatible mean in this context. Size, sculpting style, painting technique? All three or something less tangible

Minifig S range (2) and a plastic Strelets standard bearer

To start us off I have put up a few scans to show some of the figures and their relative size. I have so far bought about 130 Stadden 25mm metal figures Russian and British. I also have picked up six boxes of French light infantry in plastic by Strelets. And I dropped lucky straight away with minifig S range Zouaves. But I shall say more about all of these in time, for the moment we shall just look at the figures. Unless otherwise stated all painted examples are from the brush of Mr Asquith himself.

Kennington 20mm; Minfig S crimea zouave and FPW zouave.

(none from the Asquith collection!)