About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Friday, March 9, 2018

R is for Real Armeria or 'Royal Armories'

Having looked at museum exhibits from Brain the last two days (as well as the knights we looked at in a past Papo post; also from Mr. B), it was rather fortuitous I picked this up at Sandown last Saturday, well, actually Mr. Little as good as gave it to me at the end of the show - so big shout out to Mercator Trading.

Before cleaning

I give you Philip III of Spain (and the various other places he claimed!) C1570-1621 wearing his Milanese-made Parade armour which I'm assuming is on show at the Madrid Royal Armories.

I think I first saw these in Plastic Warrior magazine about 20 years ago (?), and I seem to recall there are others (I remember two?) to find (my back-issues are in storage so I can't check), also; I think there are larger versions, more like the Marx and Aurora kits, but I might be making that last bit up as I go along?

Or maybe the Marx or Aurora kits - someone else made some large knights, one of the Japanese kit makers; Crown? Aoshima? - were the larger ones, also made-up for sale in the museum's gift-shop?

After cleaning

Whatever the facts, the smaller ones as seen here are exquisite little polystyrene kits, a tad smaller than 54mm (closer to 50-mil or 1:35th scale) made-up and painted as a commercial exercise, the smaller and larger plinths also being in styrene, as is the base-plate.

He needed a dusting and re-gluing but I tend to shoot the show-stuff as I'm doing the initial sort and before I get round to cleaning, so the four-way image above has him teetering . . . the camera may never lie, but it can hide a multitude of sins and this two way highlights the poor finish, but he is now glued firmly back on his plinth.

Decoration is minimal with a gunmetal wash, silver over that and an over-paint or wash of a nice pale-gold which shines well in the light, minimal colour has been applied to the saddle-cloth and the horse gets a few splodges of thinned-black, however, all this appears to have happened after assembly so the sides of Phillip and the armpit area are bereft of decoration,

You can also see a richer, yellower gold used for highlights on the horse furniture and saddle and the only damage I can find is the very tip of the sword has been lost, but a dab of paint at some point will all but hide the fact it's not there.

2 comments:

Ranalcus said...

I saw some older 1/12 or 1/20 Knight model kits from AOSHIMA
But they were all foot soldier/knights without horses

Hugh Walter said...

That may be what I'm thinking of Renalcus, There was a phase in the mid-1970's for bigger knight kits, I'm sure there were several, some may have been issued in Revell Germany packaging as well . . . or Italaeri?

H