It's fun to stay at the MFCA

Years ago, in my youth (approximately 1978-1984), I was an avid painter of 25mm fantasy figures. Besides building up large collections of painted fantasy figures, my friend JP and I were regular visitors at the annual meeting and trade show of the Miniature Figure Collectors of America (MFCA). This show used to fill the field house every year over at Widener College, near West Chester, Pennsylvania. We'd go for the better part of a day, eat there, stagger home laden with loot.

Fast-forward almost 25 years. My figure painting hobby trailed off during college. I probably painted my last figures senior year. And I moved away from Pennsylvania, perennial home of the MFCA show, and stayed away till 2005.

Now that I'm back, I thought to scout around and see if the MFCA was still alive. JP mentioned that the shows had gone on, but much diminished. I made plans to see the 2006 show last year, but because of schedule confusion (the show runs Friday-Saturday, and I had assumed Saturday-Sunday), I didn't make it. JP did, and he informed it was disappointingly small. Despite that, and despite the $10 entrance fee, I made plans to go back this year.

I figured E would want to go. At the last minute R (two years younger), decided firmly that she wanted in. I anticipated boredom and an early meltdown, but agreed. Per JP's warnings, I was expecting a disappointing setup of four or five rickety tables with paunchy white guys crouched over them discussing the best way to paint the thick mustaches worn by the British office corps in India.

But no, not so much. The show may have looked a little smaller due to the large space it was in, but it was plenty large. If it was smaller than the Widener days, it was not by much at all. It took us the better part of an hour just to casually walk the aisles.

Size aside, my worry was still that the hobby would be moribund. It turns out that figure painting, like the other key hobby of my youth, model railroading, has taken on plenty of new blood, and is in no danger of immediate death.

The show, as it always has been, was divided into a vendors area and an exhibition area. The exhibits were grouped into skill ranks from Junior to Master, and would be judged at some point, though they hadn't been yet.

The skill of the painters was staggering. I lingered over a few, despite the fact that the bulk of the figures were 54mm figures and up (as opposed to the 25mm that used to be my forte), and a mix that was mostly military/historical, along with a small mixture of celebrities, superheroes and pin-ups (not age-appropriate, indeed).

Out in the vendors area, it became clear that the sale of painted figures has become big business. In the old days, if I recall well, the crowds were mostly painters and modelers. Most figures on sale were unpainted, though a number of painters did offer small numbers of their painted works for sale at high prices. You didn't have the feeling that too many people were making a living off of selling painted figures, though.

Lose a Rain Forest, gain a museum-quality Phillipe de Crécy?

Things are different now. The big deal at the moment is apparently coming from Russia, which is now turning out painted figures of extremely high quality, with correspondingly staggering prices. These figures are known generally as "St. Petersburg."

I stopped by one booth and commenced to marvelling over an extraordinarily painted 54mm war elephant. I mused aloud to JP as to the price, and extrovert that he is (relative to me) he insisted on actually asking. The person he asked was Nikki Johnson of Aero Art International, one of the main (if not the main) importers of these figures. She let me know the elephant cost $1500.00, and we then briefly talked past each other as I asked whether that were the painted or the unpainted price. She finally understood my question, and still seemed puzzled that anyone would think to try to buy a figure unpainted. "They're all painted!" she informed me. And indeed, given the quality of what we saw, the price tag began to seem more reasonable.

Here are a few samples of what we saw:
(all images are reproduced courtesy of Aero Art International. Click an image to view the full listing on the AeroArt site)




Apprently the story behind this figure line is elaborate and long-running: how the Russian sculptors and painters worked without a market under Communism; how they learned their craft using whatever materials they had; and how the "opening" of Russia eventually led to a market for their work. To hear the MFCA vendors relate the story, the Russians are well paid for their work, and indeed reap the majority of the rewards. To the extent this is true, it's an interesting preview of the future. We all know some of the things that happen as "other" part of the world "develop":

• "Climate change," perhaps catastrophic


• The razing of the last rain forests


• The disappearance of species

But there must be other things happening as well. Presumably the benefits of development are distributed unevenly. Some is lost to corruption, some to various mafia, some to the unevenness inherent in anything remotely like capitalism. But one outcome, perhaps, is that some number of people are better off than they were before. (Given the probably irreversible toll development exacts on the earth, one would hope so). As some of the formerly disadvantaged climb the hierarchy of needs, they begin to worry less about subsistence, and more about self-actualization. They begin to "contribute," not only in technology (like India) but in "softer" areas such as the figurative arts. The next wave of painted Crusaders may come from former Patagonian llama herders. The forefront of research in algebraic topology may move to Madagascar. The descendants of the Inuit, their ecologies ruined by warming, may become the great novelists of the 22nd century, or perhaps perfect the renewable hydrogen energy cell.

No doubt in 2045 the world's greatest figure painter will be from one of the old Altaic peoples of northeast Mongolia. From his spiffy studio in Ulan Bataar he will upload realtime video as he works on his latest piece, a beautiful 54mm fantasy of the war chariot of the Ice Princess, pulled by three snarling Amur (Siberian) tigers. Of course, the tigers will have been extinct in the wild for twenty years by then -- but our Mongolian friend will be free, free, free.