Our Short History

I first came in contact with Zinnfiguren in the late 1950’s when my father came back from a business trip to Germany with 2 small boxes of Kilia figures from Ochel in Bremen: French infantry 1870-71 against American Indian cavalry… (history must not have been on his mind that day)

I fell in love with them and I still have them today but in all the skirmishes they have lost most of their paint.

Some years later while walking in Paris I discovered Paradise: the shop named “au plats d’etain” and I managed to buy the Mignot foot-staff with their horseholders and from then on the Mignot Zinnfiguren was my passion. Years later I was stranded at Milan airport by the Fog (again) and while in the passenger lounge, I sat next to a brassed-off Frenchman, we got talking and he proved to be the new president of Mignot, Paris…. This grew into a business relationship and later friendship and I spent countless weekends in Paris at their HQ and manufacturing and paintworks. One day while in his office I noticed an irregularity in a wall and upon investigating it proved to be the small door of an internal cupboard full of papers, including a folder full of original designs of figurines by Lucien Rousselot, the designs were missing figures of their zinnfiguren catalogue.!! That was the start of my obsession with producing flat figures as I was determined to have all the designs engraved by Daniel Lepeltier. Now 40 years later there are only a few sets not engraved and I hope I will get the job done before my demise.

I am interested in the design and creation side and less in the production and marketing and sales so when I have a larger collection of moulds I sell them off to mainly German small producers of good quality figures.

On this website you will see that the figures listings are divided in:

 a. figures from my favourite moulds, both of Mignot designs and my own creations;

 b. figures from the moulds I sold over the years with the names of the producers where you can still buy them (although some have erased the Glorious Empires GEM name and replaced it with their own letters). 

This whole period of intensive obsession with zinnfiguren has been a great joy, especially the contact with designers, engravers, painters and collectors all sharing this great passion over many years. The hobby is rapidly dying out and we are now part of “the last mohicans”, many old friends have left us for the great beyond and they are hopefully setting up the tables with great battles to play with our beloved figures when we meet again.

I recently started digging out all the small and large boxes of figures that I had laid aside over the last 40 years convinced that I was going to do something with it some day… I was astonished with the results and I am now sorting out what I am likely to use and what to do with the rest, I will end up putting them in the “for sale” section of this website.

After finding big cartons full of figures I decided to stop collecting what I could not see every day so many books, prints and assorted bits of interest would end up for sale.

The future years I will concentrate on building small and large diorama’s using figures from my collection and Houses to fit the age depicted in the dioramas. To get the houses I need I have invested in a professional laser machine and found a very good designer who takes my ideas and improves them. These houses will be offered in the new section “laser-cut buildings”, the production will be small for beginners as well as professionals, for details look in the section for laser cut buildings.

If I manage to get the help I will need, we might start offering help on building simple diorama’s in the new sections “building simple diorama’s”.