"Displaying flats" Topic

I've seen pictures of painted flat around here but these are usually set-up studio-like shots. At home, how are flats displayed? I remember a picture of a collector who had all his painted flats framed and hung on walls instead of in a display case. How do you display yours?

It all depends if you want to game with your flats?

If you frame them or put them in a vitine unmounted it is newrly impossible to play with them. My father has his 13000 painted flats in 1,5 high drawers imbeded in slik. That is perfect for stockkeeping but you nearly never see them.

If you want to game with them is the best solution mounting them on small diorammas/ vignettes for example a volley and byonet stand. Than you play with the small diorammas.

We played with them in the late 70ies with single figures loses and had to cut down every figure from the bases or had slider constructions to remove single figures from the dioramma base…. That was in the golden age of wargame!!!

Greetings

I have some of my flats just standing in a glass display cabinet. Placed sideways, of course. A friend did a very large display of Fred the Great figures marching 12 across on a 8 tiered base. Painted on one side only. He never gamed with those.

You can't wargame with them loose (they tip over like dominoes too easily). Either that means sliding them into slotted bases a la Tony Bath, or fixing them permanently on modern style bases. I think that 'temporary' or 'permanent' decision gears how you keep them (and display them) at home.

The photos from the 60s (Featherstone's book etc.) are staged for the camera.

I tried a modern take on temporary basing for the Plataea Battleday game this year, using magnabase to fix removable figures onto a clear plastic tray (trying to combine that individual look with playablity and, well, stability … )

I was reasonably pleased with the effect and, overall, doing a relatively big battle with hundreds of flats was well received.

However, on balance, I prefer modern scenic staging such as I used for the Egyptians and natives in The Lords of the Nile

More photos of that set up: link

… and have used that approach for vignettes that are purely for display …

(Romans at Carrhae)

I am working on a re-invented slottable system for a future game, but for my vote the winner is modern scenic style basing

Phil
Ancients on the Move

Good topic. I've seen good examples of people mounting and framing their work posted on the British (now International) Flat Figure Society forum. That's fine for contest entries & displays at shows. But as your spouse or "significant other" will no doubt soon take issue with you for covering the walls with a proliferation of flats displays, there's a limit to that sort of thing.

My own flats are displayed in a fairly haphazard manner, with yet other painted figures boxed up. While they're without peer in the world of figures when it comes to compact storage, things get more problematic when you're trying to display something like a wargames army. That is, the 30mm figures aren't large but since the great majority are designed in profile, it's not so effective to just line up formations inside a curio cabinet as you could with rounds. Most of the time you have to pick and choose which to display.

As for backdrops, elaborate dioramas look great but as flats have a somewhat abstract, symbolic quality to them, displaying them simply also can be very effective.

Here's a couple shots of my figures based for gaming:

Steve

I currently own only 3 sets of plastic flats (semi-rounds as has been mentioned) but am very interested in branching out my collection. The suggestons are very helpful and I may try the vignette/scenic approach first.

I've been googling the topic and have only seen a few collector's sites. Any more out there displaying their collections?

Here's a few links. First, the Zinnfiguren site which gives a good overview with some links to collectors.
flats-zinnfiguren.com

Klio. The Zinnfigur magazine is brief but good, you can browse back issues.
zinnfiguren-klio.de

A couple good collector's sites, Bistulfi and Liljedahl.
zinnfiguren-bistulfi.com
louis-liljedahl.se

Thanks for these! Will keep me busy :)