Featherstone, Tennant and Higgs - Another Discovery and a Very Special WIP

As our nation's representatives in Congress prepare to vote a second time to impeach, I thought I would take some comfort in my hobby that has brought so much joy to me, and hopefully share a little joy with my readers.  Last month I received a package from Dick Tennant, which was the culmination of his lifetime of devotion to the hobby.  Amongst the items I received were these little gems.  Dick had reached out to me over a year ago asking if I wanted them and I had arranged for them to go to the home of a dear friend, Terry Webb.  As I found out more about the figures, I felt they were just to integral to the collection to break them apart from the whole, so with Terry's kind permission they have remained with me.

These miniatures were painted and designed by Dick Higgs, Design Director for Minifigs, and used on the cover of Donald Featherstone's book, Military Modeling.  The figures themselves were cast by Neville Dickenson, but never produced commercially by Minifigs, so as far as I know are unique.

I will have to ask Mr. Tennant how he came into possession of them, but it speaks to his early involvement with the founders of our hobby.

There have been some very slight adjustments to the figures since their debut on the cover of Military Modelling; the right hand on the rightmost hussar has been straightened to a more natural pose and the painting of his eyes corrected.  Some red striping has been added to the sword tassel on the leftmost hussar.  I will have to ask Mr. Tennant if those were some of his additions.

 

 After posting a story about the Tennant Collection I received a comment from Mark, over at the Man of TIN blog ( https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2020/12/22/richard-tennant-and-donald-featherstones-incomplete-wargaming/ ), regarding some additional connection showing the collaborative nature of the relationship between Tennant and Featherstone.  Below is an image from Featherstone's Complete Wargaming,with some of Dick Tennant's collection.  Mark's copy of the book is signed by Donald Featherstone and Inscribed to Dick Tennant!

 

Dick had indicated to me that photographs of his own collection had gotten all jumbled up with Featherstone's own and others, Hence the incorrect captioning of the original edition with corrections penciled in, and also some incorrect attribution in the Airfix guide by Bruce Quarrie on which Featherstone also contributed.

The picture above was reproduced from this original

Photography has come a long way since then!  This is the cousin to the 13th Light Dragoon pictured.  The 9th will get the same refresh to their paint and a good cleaning before too long, but there are so many units to bring back up into top notch condition!

And Now for Something Completely Different!

Below is a special Christmas present from my daughter to accompany last years gift of an anthology of the works of Robert E. Howard and his Conan stories.

A beautiful 40mm resin casting she found on Etsy, which will accompany my 40mm figures for a Dungeons and Dragoons type game called The Fantasy Trip.

.

Clearly modeled on the movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger!

A shot of his back showing his mighty thews!

As a parting shot I will link to the video just released by Schwarzenegger trying to digest and move past the events at the capital last week, featuring the Conan sword as a metaphor for American democracy - a sword must be tempered repeatedly to make it strong and resilient, and our democracy has certainly undergone a lot of that over the last four years.  I have faith we will emerge the stronger for it.

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_P-0I6sAck