The World of Model Soldiers

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Currently Part 1 - Early Model Soldiers


Based on the World of Model Soldiers originally commissioned and paid for by André Deutsch in association with Rainbird Reference Books 36 Park Street, London, W1Y 4DE in 1979, but unhappily never published, due to the miners and Ted Heath and the three day week.

Granted an ISBN number of 0-233-96537-8 and with copies of the original manuscript lodged with the principal libraries in the United Kingdom.

Much of the original material has now been superceeded, but I hope that this work will be of interest to collectors of model soldiers throughout the world.
Copyright 2003 © John Tunstill, Calzolaro, Umbertide, PG, Italy

Part 1 : Early Model Soldiers

Model figures have been made by man from the time that he was first sufficiently civilised to be able to model clay and to use the primitive tools; and model soldiers, as opposed to ordinary human figures, were made from the time of the earliest soldiers having a uniform, instead of a purely warlike appearance.

Crude drawings of model figures - not necessarily of soldiers - have been found in some of the earliest human settlements. One of the earliest collections of model soldiers belonged to the Chinese cavalry commander, Chang, and was found in the province of Wu Wei in 1969; another belonged to the Egyptian prince, Emsah, who lived about 2.000 years before the birth of Christ.

These two may have been posthumous collectors in that both collections were found in the tombs of their owners as were most of the earliest known models. Reproductions of other early Chinese figures have been on sale in China for many years and are still sold there. They are usually of a wire frame surmounted by a china or porcelain covering and then hand painted.

Around the Mediterranean there have been finds of bronze model figures from Ancient Greece; and flat tin figures of Romans, and Roman soldiers, have been found throughout Europe - one of the best known being the figure of a legionary found in Germany at Mainz. Greece, the Mediterranean islands, Mexico, and Peru all have claims to be the sites of early manufactories of model soldiers and figures fashioned from metal, terra cotta, clay, and stone which are arguably military in style.

Many of the model figures of the Middle Ages were probably religious tokens. Made of lead-tin alloy because of the ease of production, they were given, or more usually sold, to pilgrims who had made a journey to a holy place. They would have been made by local craftsmen, used to casting in soft metal, who would doubtless also have sold these tokens and badges in markets and at fairs. Playing with model soldiers was very popular in the Middle Ages among the children of noble households and they used to stage tournaments using model knights.

There is an illustration in the medieval manuscript, the Hortus Deliciarum, which depicts two children manipulating foot knights on a table top, and by the use of strings making them engage in combat. Many items thought to be toys could in reality have been models or miniature replicas, made as samples of the armourer's art. However, miniature weapons and suits of armour were produced in considerable quantities as toys for the children of wealthy families, and many have survived to the present time.

In the 1600s the French kings had collections of soldiers often made of precious metals. Louis XIII and Louis XIV both had magnificent model armies with figures made of silver, lead, wood, pottery, and paper. Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden had troops of bronze. And in subsequent centuries many rulers were to have fine collections.

The King of Rome, Napoleon II, had soldiers made of gold, the Prince Elector of Bavaria, men of wood. Frederick the Great of Prussia showed interest in lead soldiers, and Napoleon III also collected them together with Czar Nicholas I, Czar Peter III, Alfonso XIII of Spain, Kaiser Wilhelm II, the King of Hannover, and Frederick William III of Prussia.

During this early stage in the development of model and toy soldiers there does not appear to be any recorded use of them in the countries of Asia, in Russia, or in the New World apart from the goods made in precious or semi-precious material by craftsmen.

A variety of toys and puppets do survive from the Far-East - most of them shadow puppets in fierce and warlike poses. There is also a model of a tiger, symbolising India, eating a redcoat (the British Raj), which dates from the middle of the eighteenth century.

However, as far as we are concerned, the history of model soldiers and the collecting of model soldiers begins in the second half of the eighteenth century in Southern Germany when manufacturers in Nuremberg, which has always been famous for its lead and tin products, began to make figures of men and animals, and Nativity scenes from the childhood of Christ. The dealers sold them at fairs and in markets and, mainly due to their cheapness, these figures soon became very popular. They were easy to make, being flat and relatively unsophisticated, and were cast from lead or tin, or a mixture of both, in shallow moulds.

It was as easy to make a mould as it was to engrave a woodcut or a lithographic plate and so long as a man had sufficient skill he could cut moulds all day long. Once the mould was cut, of course, the production of tin figures was a task that could be given to a relatively unskilled person.

Therefore, one artist could supply a whole industry; he would carve the mould, others would cast from it, and the casting would be painted, boxed, and then sold. Sometimes, of course, one man, with perhaps the assistance of his family, carried out all the stages of production.

The stallholder at the market would arrange his figures (Zinnfiguren, tin figures, or bleisoldated, lead soldiers, as they are known in German) in boxes, tubs, or bundles on his stall and the children could buy them on a pick-and-miss basis.They could select as many of the castings as they liked and were charged purely on the weight of the metal contained in them.

Therefore, a small tree would cost less than a foot soldier, a horse soldier would be equal to about three foot soldiers, and a large tree would probably weigh the same as two horse soldiers. The larger the piece, the greater the weight, and thus, the greater the price. This was a very simple but exceedingly effective method of pricing the castings and without it the stallholder would have had to have been a mathematician to work out the different prices for each item.

The famous Hilpert family was one of the first to popularize tin figures, their production beginning in about 1770. Their stock was taken over by J.L.Stahl, who continued the business during the Napoleonic wars. The success of the trade attracted other manufacturers, among them Bestermaier and Catel.

Gradually the fame of the Nuremberg toy makers spread throughout Germany, both North and South, and then, as figures began to be exported, to the rest of Europe. Berlin, Fuerth, and Strasbourg began to rival Nuremberg as centres of production. Foundries also sprang up in other European countries - Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, Spain, and Italy - in an attempt to satisfy the demand for the figures.

Among the makers who continued along the path made by the Hilperts were Allgeyer, Ammon, Engels, Gottschalk, Lorenz, Rammon, and Wehrli. Tin figures were exported in small quantities to start with, but then in increasing numbers as the skill of the artists improved and the style and range of the castings increased. Manufacturers started to publish catalogues which would illustrate for the children of various countries, and possibly their fathers as well, the range and variety of the figures available.

The catalogues were often hand coloured and usually written in German, although some were translated into French and English. The methods employed by the flat-soldier makers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries differed very little from those employed today.

The artist or sculptor carves in reverse into a block of slate and makes an outline of the model he wishes to create by carefully cutting with sharp tools. The cavity produced will eventually form one side of the figure. He then coats the remaining flat surface of the slate with carbon or chalk and presses it against another piece of slate which is to become the other half of the mould.

By pressing the two surfaces together the carbon or chalk will be deposited on to the blank surface, but it will, of course, only mark the piece of slate where the two surfaces come into contact. The artist uses the outline thus formed to cut out the second half of the mould. He then puts both halves together, cuts airlines out of the mould so that air can escape when the hot metal is poured in, and also pouring lines to enable the metal, the lead or tin mixture, to be poured into the mould.

The cavity, when filled up with metal, produces the model figures. To date, the manufacturers of flat soldiers have produced figures of every conceivable subject, both military and civilian, ranging back in time to the Stone Ages and forward into the realms of fantasy and science fiction. The figure makers have not restricted themselves to the human form, but have produced a variety of animals, trees, buildings, bridges, tanks, lorries, guns and other weapons of war, an assortment of farmyard accessories and buildings, parts of royal palaces, triumphal gateways, and so on.

They have also made figures to represent almost every activity that human beings have ever engaged in: court scenes, farm scenes, village scenes, sex scenes, and battle scenes. And in the military sphere there are parades, engagements, combats, scenes depicting the aftermath of warfare, men and horses stationary or in motion, soldiers firing and being fired upon, living and dying.

Thus to limit oneself purely to the world of model soldiers would be to ignore the host of other figures that are on the market and that have been produced over hundreds of years. And wherever there are soldiers, there are civilians.

There was never a parade without small boys and dogs, and never a camp without followers. In Britain and the United States flat tin figures, although very popular about 100 years ago, gradually declined in popularity because the figures which were imported became more expensive and were gradually overtaken by home-produced items.

These invariably were not flat soldiers but fully round figures similar to those many of us played with as children. Although they were often larger, they could be marketed at a much lower price because of lower distribution costs, and the fact that taxation and import duties were not levied on them.

Therefore, as there was no home market in existence for flat soldiers, the flat figure almost disappeared outside its native land before World War I for, as the home-produced figures were hollow cast, no one ever bothered to return to what were considered the old-fashioned flat tin soldiers.

In Germany and central Europe the flat tin figure still reigns supreme, the rounded French, British, and later, American model soldiers never usurped the place of the former in the hearts of collectors, and the preferences of a father were passed to his son, and then to his grandson.

During the years of World War I and for many years after, while Germany was recovering from the economic depression, the flat tin soldier was not available, and so the round lead figure gained in popularity up until the time that the figures were no longer made for children because the high lead content in them was found to be harmful.