What is often forgotten is that those men that made toy soldiers were classically trained artists (like my grandfather). They made commercial art so they could afford to make their own works (like my grandfather). Often they had worn the same uniforms and fought the soldiers they later sculpted (like my grandfather).

Now enlarge it to lifesize and admire the composition, the form, the presence, the history of art inevitably contained in this miniature Michelangelo, these classically Greek plastic soldiers. Then notice the almost complete lack of emotional content, the human as expendable cannon fodder, the distance of the toy symbol to the feelings and consequences of war.

My grandfather sculpted toy soldiers, he represented the end of an era, the end of a line of classically trained skilled artists leaving art colleges. When they made toy soldiers they poured all their knowledge of great classical art into them, all their knowledge of composition, form & movement.

Now larger than life they appear like broken monuments, like the Greek & Roman figures art students used to study, despite their lack of limbs, heads & paint.