by grwebster » Tue Jan 12, 2010 9:31 am
The stand designs are a major indication, Chris. No one else did them. The plastic P-40 one came from a former employee at Curtiss. I have seen a larger Curtiss P-40 in metal - it also used the same stand design. I have not seen any others, ever. In the case of the two metal/wood ones in the photos above, they came from the Curtiss factory museum that closed, or so I was told.
I am not a collector as such or expert on these, but I believe the nomenclature distinction made is that models that were mass produced for the factory by outside firms such as Allyn, Topping -but only given out by the manufacturers are referred to as manufacturer's desk models, not in-house factory models.
Of course, the models could have been made for Curtiss being done up by Space Models.....etc, but as few examples were made and mostly used by the factory, they are still considered factory models.
Grumann, Douglas, and Lockheed and Boeing { and probably Curtiss, too} did their own models in house in their design shops, often called 'one -of' models by collectors as they were only produced in one or two examples in many cases. Many of these were design prototypes that were never produced, but they were used in presentations and their photos were used in PR releases. I have seen several examples of these, usually protected within custom made wooden shipping boxes. Inside of these could be examples of the various different weapons that could be carried, long range refueling pods etc that could be attached to the model. Some even have different designs for the tail or wings that could be used to reconfigure the model in a variety of versions. Only in rare cases were they presented to someone. These same firms contracted with Topping etc to make mass produced desk models to give away to promote aircraft entering production.
There are aluminum models made today that look very much like original ones, the Air France small 'Travel Agency' ones on very original looking globe stands are examples.
Gary Fields did {does?} some super alu models of flying boats, and some Douglas stuff, too. Paul Ben {sp?} of the UK did {does?} a series of alu models of the British flying boats and used repro stands that are almost identical to the original. The original models in this case were hollow sheet alu, and the repros solid.
Hopefully, Larry, Ladd, Allyson, Sir George, and the other forum members that are the major collectors and experts in this field could comment.
