Cherilea Running Hare

He has so much action yet all four legs are on the ground Beautiful model!

Lovely sculpt. I really like that a lot.

Cherilea, - another brand I never heard of

That model certainly has plenty of charm , - congratulations for finding him, Chris

Another British treasure presented with British quality! Lovely hare!

Very very interesting figurine. :) Thanks
Have you more informations about this brand, especially about their wildlife animals?

widukind wrote:

Very very interesting figurine. :) Thanks
Have you more informations about this brand, especially about their wildlife animals?

Here's a group photo of them - mostly rather crude copies of Britains zoo range, + the Timpo elephant, + former lead Cherilea and JoHilCo animals - the Cherilea company was started by former JoHillCo people, and bought many of their moulds when JoHillCo finally closed down.

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Cherilea produced some excellent figures in lead, and some of their earlier plastic figures were very good too, but they then declined in quality rapidly. They were regarded as a cheapo brand (Similar to Charbens, who also produced excellent items in the old lead days, but declined in the 1960s plastic era), usually sold in small local general stores and cheapo big stores like Woolworths.

If anyone is interested, for historical and completion collecting purposes (no one would want them for their artistic or accuracy appeal!) I have spares of most of them to sell or swap for vintage plastic by Danish, French & German (including former DDR) brands.
Note, I don't have duplicates of the Triceratops at the front of the photo, from a set of 6 Dinosaurs by Cherilea, I think the same as the Timpo dinosaurs.

Note: The running hare was in their farm range. There was a sitting up hare too. I have a spare of each, + lots of spares of others in their (also crude) 1960> farm range. Also a few spares of their earlier and much nicer plastic farm range

Thank you Chris and Dave for all these good pics I am asking myself which ones are originals because I can see a lot of copies here

Original JoHillCo/Cherilea designs, bearing in mind that Wilf Cherrinton designed for JoHillCo before he left with Mr Leaver to set up Cherilea - the name from the first parts of their names, some previously in lead for either/both, were:
Top row: camel, baby giraffe
2nd row: female deer, zebra, stag deer, rhino
3rd row: all of them
bottom row; sitting chimp, monkey/ape with ball, pelican, rolling panda, triceratops, croc, penguin, seal, anteater.

Copies:
Top: Timpo elephant, Britains (lead & plastic) bison & adult giraffe
2nd: Britains (lead & plastic) wolf, ostrich, & kangaroo
bottom: Britains plastic (poor copy of) standing gorilla, sitting panda, walking polar bear
Britains (lead & plastic) giant tortoise
The otter with fish we've discussed here before, made in lead by JoHillCo, but a copy of a very early, and now very rare & expensive, Austrian cold painted bronze item, probably by Bergmann.

Not in this photo, but probably also by Cherilea, discussed in the Britains elephants thread, was a copy of the Britains lead baby Indian elephant.

There were many other unmarked copies of Britains figures which it is not known for sure who made them, but JoHillCo and Cherilea are among the 'usual suspects', along with Paramount, Speedwell, & Trojan, although they often changed them a bit, so they weren't quite direct copies.

The original anteater looks a lot like a smaller copy of the Hausser Anteater

Yes, indeed it does.
I would have said so - if I knew about Hausser anteater, which I didn't.

All I knew was that it was made for a long time (pre-war) by JoHillCo, probably before Wilf Cherrinton's time with them.
I did wonder why the lead (& later plastic) versions were way over sized to fit in with a nominally 1:32 scale range - this explains it.

Also, of course, the otter with fish was way too big for 1:32 for the same reason, it was a direct copy of an Austrian bronze, and Austrian bronzes were all over the place regarding scales.

Thank you :)

Thanks LeeAnn, Scott, Susanne, Roger, Andreas and Christophe for your comments. All appreciated.

Also to Dave for the extra details regarding the Cherilea company and their products.

Widukind , I really like the seal , otter , Black leopard , and the rhino figures !

Coop wrote:

Widukind , I really like the seal , otter , Black leopard , and the rhino figures !

Thanks but they are not mine :)