Sunday 21 March 2010

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!)

11 comments:

Vintage Wargaming said...

Lovely to see the Crimean figures, especialy the S Range. John Cunningham should have the Douglas figures available soon. Also worth not forgetting the Scruby figures too. I am tempted to look to these for some cavalry figures

Clive

Ross Mac rmacfa@gmail.com said...

Those Stadden 25's are exquisite and I so love the S Range figures but nice to see that the Strelitz seem to blend nicely, it'll be interesting to see them painted.

Anyway for me the past is misty but the future is shiny, or at least the figures that I've coated in Future are shiny.

Bit I'm not doing Crimean, I'm not doing Crimean, I'm not......

-Ross

Conrad Kinch said...

They're beautiful figures John. You must be very proud.

marinergrim said...

20mm seems to be in something of a rennaisance at the moment doesn't it?
Plastic figures from Zvezda and the like, Newline and thier ranges for example all making their presence felt.
Excellent stuff.

Stryker said...

Sounds like a great project and I'm really looking forward to seeing some more photos. BTW that chap with the spyglass is of course Hinton Hunt...

Ian

Poacher said...

Oooohh..

I am once more feeling that strange, unwordly urge to do the Crimean War.

With glossy soldiers, of course....

chrissie

Anonymous said...

The Douglas Miniatures will be available again in 8-12 weeks time-I have some samples on pre-order from Mr Cunningham.

And yes 20mm is back! Now all we need is Callan, Ziggy Stardust and Nationalisation and the circle is complete!

Matt

Hugh Walter said...

Nice comparisons, prooving what I was always argueing on the forums (before I grew up and walked away with half my sanity intact!), figures of different sizes will look OK if they are painted the same...just like real soldiers who vary by...what? 8/10 inches? And several stone!

Peeler said...

Thoroughly good read John, thanks. Good to see the older figures are still around, and being used, look forward to hearing more on them.
Regards,

tidders2 said...

What a nice new project, and I expect you must be well pleased with your newly acquired armies.

-- Allan

airhead said...

Totally agree with Maverick collecting, you just have to look at the man in the street, he/she comes in some very different sizes.

Giles posted some Perry Carlist figures a while back, and the was definitely a fat lad amongst the group.

All the best

Airhead