I don't buy many of these now, but I have a soft spot for ceramic buildings - especially churches. To make certain there is no misunderstanding here, I happily confirm that these are ornaments, such as you might find on your grandmother's bookcase; I like them because they have a nice, rather rough charm, and introduce a welcome organic touch into my battlefields, with their eternal silly hexes. They appear to me, in fact, as being like real buildings, an impression I do not get from plastic or MDF kits.
This new one is not another Tey Potteries creation (I have quite a few of those, but I find their churches are generally disappointing); it is by Sulley Ceramics, and it is the church of St Michael and All Angels, Brantham, Suffolk. Sulley are fairly hard to come by at reasonable prices - the principal potter/artist was Marjorie Barton, who passed away in 2021 - an interesting listing of her churches is here, if you are a collector or simply a resident of Suffolk. There is an interesting history of Sulley's here.
Unlike the Tey Britain in Miniature range, there is some variability in scale with Sulley products; if it is a miniature of a big church, the scale may be a tad smaller, to keep the footprint within the bounds of grannie's bookcase. This particular one is somewhere between 10mm and 15mm scale, which works nicely with my "one size down" policy for buildings for 20mm figures. My ECW troops would certainly have to stoop a bit to get in the door, but the overall size is about 7" long, 4" high, which is fine.
Each of my 20mm toy soldiers represents 33 real men anyway, so the whole set up is just a massive compromise!
But what we really want to know is whether the seller was a lady named Sue......☺
ReplyDeleteNeil
An excellent question - thanks Neil - that made me laugh for the first time for a little while! No - I have to report that the seller was a bloke named Alan - very helpful chap, in fact. I miss the Sues. That was a strange period - the Sues seem to specialise in Lilliput Lane and David Winter cottages; I've only a couple of those left now - they are heavy and difficult to store safely (plaster casting), and also (with hindsight) rather too cute. The (hollow) pottery buildings are handier, and also stylistically more to my taste now. I also remember the Sues as a period of genteel (ladies') eBay which was a culture shock for me and may have gone forever - one of them sent me a lollipop and a greetings card with my purchase!
DeleteThey all look like they'd grace any wargaming table?
ReplyDeleteYes indeed - you have to watch the scale, but these are all attractive. I'm astonished that they made so many different churches - in fact in some ways I'm astonished that there was ever a market for such things - and why Suffolk? - did they have particularly good clay there? All good though.
DeleteI think some of these may have been commissioned by the actual churches - not sure. I'm slightly uneasy that the church is now called St Michael and All Angels - yet the miniature has "St Michael the Archangel" stamped on the bottom. Why two different names? You don't suppose those ECW Puritans disapproved of archangels...?
The matt varnish really is very effective at transforming from ceramic ornament to wargames terrain.
ReplyDeleteAgreed - I've probably nullified their value to collectors by dulling them down, but they're mine and I don't care, so HAHAHAHA!
DeleteGlad to see you back posting. Agree those churches look very nice, very characterful.
ReplyDeleteThank you Jim - I thought I'd attempt some gentle wargaming posts before I start ranting about world affairs!
DeleteThe churches have become rather an odd fetish - I try not to feature the same buildings in every game - my games all look a bit samey anyway, so anything which helps is welcome!
Good to see you back posting Tony. Interesting range of churches. Very diverse styles. The one from Santa Barbara looks like it would fit in with your Peninsula War games.
ReplyDeleteThey are pleasing, but hard to get hold of these days. I think Sulley collectors are more serious than Tey collectors.
DeleteI feel duty bound to chip in, as Suffolk correspondent - nice to see Long Melford and Lavenham churches included in the catalog, they are both about 3 miles from me. I suspect a couple of reasons for the prevalence of Suffolk subjects: (i) 'Holy' Suffolk as it was known, simply has a large number (500+ mentioned in Domesday?) of churches, and the fabulous wealth of the wool/cloth industries before c.1500 meant a lot was spent on them - those two I mention are really very grand for parish churches.. (ii) In the 1960s/70s there was a big trend for hippy/bohemian types to move to the country, and Suffolk had a lot of old cottages that had been abandoned as the agriculture was mechanised and the few remaining workers got nice new Council Houses, hence really cheap, in lovely country and not too far from London (I'm just reading about the nature writer Roger Deakin, for example, who bought a run-down farmhouse to escape from the big smoke). Among those 'creative' types I'm sure there were quite a few potters, and the same cottages they were buying up made good subjects too..
ReplyDeleteThanks very much for this David - that gives a fascinating insight into the traditions. I remember the days when I used to visit the Cotswolds area on business, and there, too, there was a history of the big wool merchant families striving to outdo each other with vast churches.
DeleteOn the question of scale, I was going to say that that looks to me like a 12 or 13thC church whose windows were upgraded to Gothic in the14th or 15thC and that, say, 17th C soldiers might have been taller than the folk 13th C churches were built for. But when I looked into it apparently, if anything, people got shorter over that time (certainly in Europe, because of the terrible effects of the Thirty Years War). However, you could argue that churches which have been standing for a long time often end up lower than the churchyard they are in, so the soldiers should look a shade tall relative to the building.
ReplyDeleteInteresting - if the 30 Years War had lasted longer, would people have shrunk further? My soldiers would certainly not be comfortable if required to live in my "one size down" buildings, but they are quite happy because, like me, they think that a small group of undersized buildings looks much more like a village than a single correctly-scaled building. I've felt this way since, many years ago, I was badly shaken by the fact that the orchard of Peter Gilder's La Haye Sainte could have easily held the entire Imperial Guard. Something wrong there, I thought to myself...
DeleteIt seems it was more that the Thirty Years War pushed folk back close to the minimum height to which adult humans grow if they get enough food to survive. People had been able to grow taller during the Middle Ages, especially immediately after the Black Death had reduced the population without the destruction that comes with a war. French Napoleonic soldiers might have been quite small, owing to recurrent late 18thC famines.
ReplyDeleteBloody marvellous Tony. As you say, good looking and full of character. It will look wonderful surrounded by your troops.
ReplyDeleteRegards, James