The World of Model Soldiers

Part 9 (cont'd.) : Civilian Figures

Russel Gammage designed a series for the Queen’s Coronation in 1952 which contained representations of many of those who took part in the ceremony. He continues to sell through his firm Rose Miniatures a selection of civilians, cave women, Egyptian goddesses, dancers, and musicians, Greek dancers and ancient maidens. Most of these figures are cast separately from their stands and although they need to be glued in place, their advantage lies in the fact that they can easily be added to a scene in a diorama without major surgery.

Frontier Figures, now sadly out of business, made an interesting selection of women in uniform, mainly of the World War I period, and J.G. Products currently produce a range of 75 mm ladies, usually cast in two or three parts because of the intricate positioning of the figures, but quite easily assembled by using one of the new instant glues.

Cliff Sanderson makes figures of civilians which are distributed by Greenwood and Ball in Britain, and by the Military Shop of California in the United States. Most of his figures are non-military but depict civilians usually in a military surrounding. Tavern girls, slave girls, flower sellers, and children accompany Roman senators, patricians, and slave owners. The figures are well cut and are usually one-piece castings in white metal.

Many of the manufacturers of flat soldiers produced figures inspired by famous paintings. Gottstein, for example, made a marvellous Life of Henry VIII set, based on the series of pictures by Holbein. He also produced in flat a set of 42 kings and queens of Great Britain, from William the Conqueror up to George VI.

Coulter-Bennett in California do a range of 90 mm figures called ‘The Entertainers’. They have made a dozen of the world’s most popular film stars depicted in their more famous roles: Jean Harlow, for example, is shown as Kitty Packard from the film Dinner at Eight, and Charles Laughton as Henry VIII from the film of the same title.

In recent years there has been an upsurge of the fantasy figure. The fantasy ranges, which include almost anything that is not of a military or recognized historical period, cover monsters of various shapes and sizes, amazons and naked ladies, heroes and heroines, and gods and goddesses. In addition a new form of war gaming has appeared, concerned with fiction and fantasy. The figures for these games are made in a variety of sizes from about 15 mm up to approximately 30 mm. They are the creations in metal of characters that appear in the works of novelists such as Tolkien, for example, or in the books and films on science fiction which have been regularly produced both in Britain and the USA, with their variety of monsters, spacemen, and fantastic creatures. The model manufacturer, although he has to keep fairly close to the verbal description given by the author, or to the illustration on the jacket of the book, still has a fairly wide range over which his imagination can travel.

Manufacturers are steadily increasing their ranges of fantasy figures – some based on the style Frank Frazetta used in his famous interpretations of early novels by Robert E. Howard, Rice-Burroughs and other writers. Other figures of the fantasy range are based on the works of Robert E. Howard, a writer who, similar to Edgar Rice Burroughs, tells tales not so much of science fiction, but of earth-bound fiction in which the heroes battle with the forces of darkness to save nubile and full-breasted maidens from the grip of nightmarish creatures. Quite what happens to the flat-chested maidens with buck teeth, one never knows!

A major producer of the smaller fantasy figures, for which there are complex sets of rules, are Miniature Figurines in England, and, according to them, they export all over the world.

One artist behind several of the larger figures based on these fantasies is the gifted sculptor, Barry Minot, who has been producing excellent figures for a number of years, mainly in the 30 mm scale. His output in this size proved so popular that he has now started a range of 25 mm figures. Some of his more recent figures draw on the legends of Ancient Greece as well as those inspired by Norse folklore. He also produces 70 mm figures including a very fine Landknecht and Mata Hari, which are distributed in the USA by Skirmish Line of New Jersey. He is one of a new breed of artists making and manufacturing normally for direct mail order and he has another outlet in the USA called the Barry Minot Miniature Corporation, of New York Garden City.