lead horse toy

[patpall22]

Found this horse toy today and was curious if anyone knows how old it might be it's really heavy and pliable, I'm pretty sure it's lead. any info would be great.

 

[stefen]

I can tell you that lead soldiers are still available today...there a store near Hearst Castle that has companies of soldiers of many armed forces...CW, French, English, WWII and the like...as well as cannons, etc.

 

[patpall22]

thanks stefan, I know its old and have been trying to identify this for the last couple of hours. Haven't found anything yet

 

[villagenut]

these have been produced and mass produced for a few centuries. Hume shows one example in one of his books,describing it as circa 1790 made from lead with a two piece mold. Some have speculated that these lead toys are from no earlier than 1893,with the advent of the hollow casting that William Britain introduced in that year. But that was just an improvement over the earlier two piece molds which were clearly used much earlier than that. Britains new castings allowed excess lead material to be poured out before the lead set up, which saved on the amount of actual lead needed to manufacture the toy figures. So it is often difficult to date these without closer inspection. Sometimes the context of the location found as wel as other found artifacts at the site will help determine age as well. Very cool find either way,my guess would be around the turn of the century,1900 era. I believe that the older mold patterns were continually used for these, making newer ones resemble the much older ones.

 

[patpall22]

thanks village nut! I was excited to date this bc I hound it just outside of a historical mansion that it and 30 acres have been turned into a city park in the 1970's
needless to say, this place has been pounded by detectors over the years and this is the only relic or coin find around the structure in many years of hunting it. the house dates back to the 1920's but where I live thats old considering the town I live only dated back to 1915. When i was looking for info, i ran across your avatar pic, I think the caption was headless horseman. Makes allot of since that reused molds would make it very hard to date. thanks again

 

[patpall22]

some have speculated that these lead toys are from no earlier than 1893,with the advent of the hollow casting that William Britain introduced in that year

Just curios? doest this imply that the horses are hollow or is this just a casting technique?

 

[BosnMate]

Before WWII I had lead soldiers, then with the war the soldiers all turned to plastic, and Mom wouldn't buy me any because they were cheap plastic and not the real thing.
I was raised in San Luis Obispo, and if one would look in the flower bed next to the house, between the fire place to the back yard, I would expect they would find a soldier
or two. Later we found out what the plastic toys were good for. If you lit them on fire, they would burn and melted, flaming plastic would drop off. We then would bomb
lines of ants with fire bombs. ----------------------- Give me a break, it was WWII, and they were Nazi ants.

 

[stefen]

I recall playing with a classmate in his family basement casting lead soldiers with a hot plate and molds from a toy kit...just after WWII...

 

[villagenut]

Dang,you guys are old