Officer, Sergeant and 4 privates

54mm Italian Army 1900

Tradition was originally founded in the 1950’s by Roy Belmont-Maitland who was a legendary collector of uniforms and Militaria.

Charles C. Stadden was the main sculptor and the company traded from Mayfair where it was to have shops for the next 60 years. Over that period the name Tradition of London has been synonymous with everything to do with toy soldiers with collector’s worldwide heading to their central London shops.

In the 1960’s Roy also began publishing a new, ground breaking for its day, military magazine under the name ‘Tradition’. The magazine has proven to be a great source of toy soldier/militaria enthusiast over many years and old copies are still available to be reproduced today!

After the sad death of Roy in the late 80’s Tradition was taken over by new Swedish owners, Anders and Gunnar Lindström. Over the years a veritable honours list of well-known names in the miniature figure sculpting and painting world has, at one time or another worked for Tradition, including the likes of Charles Stadden, his son Andrew Stadden, Edward Suren, Alan Caton, Marcus Hinton, David Grieve, Ian McKenzie, and many others. 

Two master makers stand out, first Charles Stadden and later David Scheinmann. It was David who introduced the toy soldier range that became the bedrock of the company’s success since the 1980’s. David recently retired but his figures soldier on and are now greatly in demand due to their quality and extremely fine detail…as well as the lovely traditional sought after red cardboard boxes! 

Steve Hare who worked for Tradition for many years running the shops and acting as their heartbeat confirmed that the most sought after periods were, as always ‘Napoleonic’s, both French and British! (It will be remembered that it was Tradition that pulled off the coup of landing the commission to produce toy soldier-style sets of Bernard Cornwell’s famous Sharpe series featuring all the well-known characters from the TV programmes. These have, and continue to be best sellers as the TV series has been shown around the world). However, added Steve, that said, British Colonial soldiers are very popular as well as knights.’

Tradition today has a large worldwide customer base and continues to make and hand paint its models from the workshop in Nottingham.

The sets themselves are now mailed out from Sweden where the company operates its largest shop run by Magnus Lindstrom, who is today the face of Tradition.

When it all comes down to basics, there’s nothing like a set of toy soldiers. You cannot get the same feeling from holding a laptop or a pc as you do when you arrange a set of soldiers on display and ready for action!

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All items are packed with the care they deserve and posted to you promptly.

Thanks for viewing and I hope like many other happy customers that you would also like to own one of my items for sale.