Still at Hertford Uni in 2000, and having tried other kinds of model I wanted to be making historical ones. This was the time when Wargames Foundry had very ambitious plans, which I thought I might become part of. To test my work I was asked to make a wargames village and this was the result. As Foundry boss Bryan Ansell was still residing in Guernsey, I was asked to show it to his representative on earth, the sculptor Mark Copplestone. I remember spending a great afternoon with Mark in Birmingham, and seeing his sculpting, which I've always loved. He was impressed with my modelling work, and excited phone calls with Bryan ensued. Big plans were made. Foundry was all about big plans at that time.
The models found their way next to Kevin Dallimore (the famous painter of figures) who photographed them, and what you see below is part of the result. The figure of an eighteenth century artist was used by Kevin both to show scale and as a kind of trademark. The model was made to my "village unit" design, so comprised a base as well as three houses, a barn, a church a manor house, a pigsty and a muck-heap, all of which you can see here. Some of you may remember the wonderful modelling articles by "Stan Catchpol" (really Don or Bryan Fosten?) in Military Modelling magazine. One of them featured the modelling of straw and I always wanted to use the technique shown to construct a "smelly-looking" manure heap, so here it is!
The buildings and fences are authentically German-looking, but in a rather generic way. Later on I would get into researching vernacular architecture in more depth and discover that every area of Germany had its own local styles.
PS: Update: Going through my old folders I came across some more images of my Japanese castle model. As that was a popular post I have added three pictures to it now. It can be found as "My Earliest Model" under the Japan label in the blog's right-hand column.
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