In MW 2 there is one of my favourite photographs of some Gendarmes that I assume belonged to Peter Gilder. This unit was one of the units that inspired me to collect the armies of the Italian Wars.
This got me thinking, [slowly] I know that two of Peter Gilders armies have been sold recently, his AWI collection and some of his ECW units. Well what happened to his Italian Wars army?
Now this is the one I would really like to own, or just the unit from MW 2.
This is not the only army that I would love to know what happened to them. The wonderful Seven Years War armies painted by Phil Robinson are another set of units that I would love to trace.
I have never seen these units on any game over the last thirty years.
Does someone just buy these up and then sit in a darkened room staring at the figures, slavering over their beauty?
Wargames toys are really there to be played with, admired yes, but definitely played with.
As I work through the early MW'S I know there are some wonderful photographs of the later Connoisseur range of gendarmes painted by Peter Gilder,again these were inspirational, where did they go?
Surely they weren't thrown away into a skip.
I must admit this thought does keep me awake at night, what if there is a council dump somewhere that has piles of wonderfully painted Doug Mason figures buried under dirty nappies! Dumped there by the partner of a wargamer who always begrudged the time spent wargaming to the detriment of their relationship. Just a thought anyway....
I got a chance to buy some of those from Tony Runkee- perhaps not those precise figures but certainly some in the same style and time period. However I declined.
ReplyDeleteBut recently DID get my hands on a big chunk of the ECW collection from Battleground TV series- also featured in Asquith nad Gilders Naseby book (Osprey 1979) and on the Front cover of the last issue of Battle magazine. Didn't get them all but did get some 300 plus figures and guns and waggons . Currently blowing the dust off and working out how to tart up the damaged bits- not that there are many of those.
Andy,
DeleteIve just realised what you said. Were you offered the Italian wars range.?
Iwas offered some units - not many as I recall but certainly 2 or 3
DeleteI have one (Phil Robinson painted) figure from the Italian Wars collection, the majority of it was broken up via Ebay by the same house clearance company that i got the ECW from about 10 years ago. I'll leave you to speculate on whose house was cleared....
DeletePhil Robinson's SYW is still in the US, and likely to stay there given the price the current owner was asking a few years ago. I was told that the quality varied widely - some lovely stuff (that made the pages of MW) and a lot of very ordinary filler units.
All the Gilder AWI that i have are pretty good though 8-)
cheers.
Good Evening,
DeleteI love your blog by the way, very inspiring.
I always seem to miss out on these things, probably because I keep myself to myself, not a good idea really.
The Phil Robinson figures that I remember admiring in the MW, were again very inspiring, but I would imagine its would be silly money nowadays, a bit like the Peter Gilder ACW armies.
You are a very lucky person to have the AWI armies, there was some fine regiments in amongst the group.
Thanks Robbie.