Character Cachés
: A cross between toby jugs and china money boxes.
An entrepreneur promised to make our fortunes if we would make some
character money boxes for him. He was going to sell them at motorway
service stations in the belief that people would spend money en route.
Barré Funnell did the initial design work, together we produced
samples, and surprise, surprise, never saw the entrepreneur again. As
a result, very few were produced by us. We have never seen clones of
the models and we certainly never sold him the copyright to copy them.
To do the models justice required very careful hand-painting which resulted
in a price that made them too expensive for an impulse-buy. I sold some
at shows, but after we stopped going to general shows and concentrated
on the Dolls House shows, we found that they were not exactly what the
Dolls House collectors were looking for. The last one was made in 1986.
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| Bobby, the tallest at 6.5 inches high, (167 mm) | Beaky. The hand behind his back holds a cane. |
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| Brief | Butcher |
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| Seadog, the shortest fellow at 5.9 inches, (149 mm) | Yokel. There was a hole in his right hand for the shepherd's crook. |
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The image on the left shows the slot in the back of the head of Beaky, and the large hole in the base of Yokel. This hole was filled with a plastic bung which had more tolerance than a rigid turned cork. The base shows quite clearly the inscribed lettering, Lenham Pottery, Norwich. With the logo, AF, and the year letter "q", for 1981. See the page of information on dates, if you are interested. |