Bonhams Toy Soldiers Revisited

Monday, June 3, 2013

Bonhams Toy Soldiers Revisited

   I recently made a great discovery at Bonhams, the outstanding international Auction house. I learned that they have a great feature of magnification for their listings. I recently wrote about that feature on May 18, 2013. At that time, I promised to revisit my initial Bonhams subject of toy soldiers.  I had originally written about that on January 31, 2013 (Please click to be redirected). Mr. James Opie is the specialist on lead soldiers and toys, and had originally granted me the permission to write about them. 

   I decided to revisit, because the toy soldiers are very small in a photo, especially when there are many of them in a set. Therefore, having the ability to magnify a photo allows the bidder the ability to see the subjects better. I decided to present 5 listings, along with some magnified images to better illustrate their excellent feature.

Please click on this sentence to visit the specific auction at Bonhams

I never realized that these soldiers featured moveable arms. You can see how the arm is positioned on the rounded  ball shaped-head.

I like the way James Opie has presented this listing. His 3 different views illustrate the toys superbly, from the different viewpoints, and compositions. I hope that he had help,because arranging so many small figures and having them stay standing is no easy feat, especially when the fures have 4 legs! 

Don't forget that you can view these images in a slide show progression,and magnify them even more.  I'm limited in Blogger because once I set the format, I'm stuck "forever" in that layout. That's a very poor feature on any blog provider!

You can see with this magnification the darkened chin and neck  areas.  The drummer of course had to have shaved to best present himself to the civilians watching him and his  column.  What's also of interest is the fact that all of these toys were hand-painted. When you compare  identical soldiers, you can see all of the minute idiosyncrasies (differences) from soldier to soldier, and even from horse to horse. 

Look at the subtle colour variations, especially in the dark blues. Many of the people who worked on painting the small figures had to learn to blend the colours. Notice the different shades from lighter to darker tones. These painters, or more appropriately "artists" had to know how to blend colours to create this effect. What'e even more interesting, is the fact that they had to paints thousands of these fine little figures each day! 

In the above photo, you can see the differences in the buttons, and on the face, the size of the eyes and noses. The artists had to work with very small brushes, and I wonder how strong the lighting was in the 1900's in these factories where the Britains soldiers were made. 

Even after more that  anywhere from 80-110 years, these fine figures still march in pride and present their best colours in their best form.  You certainly have to credit the company and their employees for a job well done!

Thanks for dropping by,

and as always,

have a great part of the day,

wherever you may be.

Stacey