Death Part 2!

Here is the next part of the Death Set!

Death Library Stamp DW50 & DW50P
This is a rubber stamp with Deaths Head on the top.  This came in two versions.  A black one and a painted one.  The non painted one was £12.99 and the painted version was a princely £14.99. The actual stamp part of this piece was designed by Stephen Briggs with Leigh being behind the handle. These don’t come up very often and tend to stay modestly priced. They are nice pieces and are functional. They are a nice piece to pick up if funds are low. This piece is hard to describe so I have taken a photo of the piece as featured in the Clarecraft Mail Order Catalogue December 2000.

Death in the Kitchen DW57

This piece was sculpted by Leigh and shows Death in his apron stood with a frying pan complete with fried eggs.  There is a cat winding round his ankles and a small bowl of milk on the floor.  The apron even has stains down the front of it!!  This was introduced in 1996 and was available until closure.  I don’t have numbers sold for this piece.  The earlier pieces will have resin frying pans.  After the pewter machine arrived this piece had pewter trademarks and pewter frying pans. I have 2 versions of this piece. One is the original piece with the resin pan and the second was one I got as Paint Your Own (PYO) at a Discworld Event. This one came with the pewter pan. There are no pictures of my PYO version as as much as I enjoy painting the pieces, I am no painter!! The original retail price was £29.99.

Death as Bill Door DW75

This piece is the same as the piece that was released as DWE5 and sold at the 1997 Event.  There is a difference, the Event pieces have Clarecraft Event 1997 on a plaque at the bottom of the piece whereas the general sale ones do not have this.  This is a flat back piece inspired by the book Reaper Man where Death goes to work on a farm (Cyril was also inspired by this book).  It shows Death complete with straw hat standing at a stable door with Nancy the pig.  The quote is from Reaper Man ‘they’d called him Good Old Bill.  No-one had ever called him that before.’ This was sculpted by Joe Pattison and was introduced in August 1997 and retired in August 2000.  789 were sold which is only a few more than the event version.  The RRP was £34.99 and these have reached £70.

Death Mirror DW70

There are 2 mirrors in the Clarecraft Discworld range.  One features Death and the other Rincewind.  I don’t have either of the mirrors.  They are attractive but they retailed for £55.99, when I had that kind of money to spend on one figurine there was always something else I wanted more so I never got round to it!!

The Death one is particularly charming as the frame of the mirror has Death leaning round and grinning into the mirror!  These pieces probably aren’t all that common therefore I have attached a picture I took out of my December 2000 Mail Order Catalogue.  Just so people can see what I’m talking about!

Death as the Hogfather DW72

I have made no secret about my love of the Hogfather, it is possibly one of my favourite books in the canon (until I start thinking about it and then I remember all the others I love, so its best not to think about it.)  I also love Death, he is one of my favourite characters and I have a great deal of affection for him.  

I have some lovely artwork involving this character but do worry sometimes that when people come to my house and see pictures of a skeleton in a cowl everywhere they must think I’m slightly odd.  Fortunately my living room is covered with Discanalia!??!, from the shields that go around the top of the room, to the shelves in every corner covered with figurine, to the artwork on the walls so hopefully most visitors detect a theme!!!

Anyhoo! Death as the Hogfather is a piece I have a great deal of affection for.  It is beautifully made, you can even see the pillow that Death stuffed down the robe to make himself look fat and jolly.  The quote of course comes from Hogfather. ‘Death hung the stockings back on the mantlepiece.  NOW WE MUST BE GOING.  HAPPY HOGSWATCH.  ER... OH, YES: HO. HO. HO.’.  

There were many parts of this book that actually made me laugh out loud a long time before that became such a pervasive phrase!  Death makes a wonderful Hogfather and truly seems to enjoy giving people things.  This book reveals more about Deaths character, he is truly endearing!!

This piece was introduced in 1998 along with Pixie Albert and was sculpted by Joe Pattison.This is quite a large heavy piece, nice and chunky.  The original price was £49.95 and it usually makes around £70.

Pixie Albert DW85

I would have put this next piece in the extras section but it is so intrinsically related to the Hogfather piece that I decided to put them together.  Obviously any Hogfather needs his happy jolly pixie companions.  Unfortunately we get Pixie Albert!!  A lovely piece showing Albert looking extremely grumpy in a lovely green costume!  He even has a dew drop hanging from his nose!! 

The quote is from Hogfather when Susan confronts Death and Albert and questions whether it is appropriate to eat the items children leave out for the Hogfather.  “‘and how many have you had, may i ask?’ ‘dunno, ain’t counted’, said Albert happily.  ‘ONE MILLION, EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND, SEVEN HUNDRED AND SIX’, said Death.  ‘AND SIXTY EIGHT THOUSAND, THREE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN PORK PIES. AND ONE TURNIP’.  ‘It looked pork-pie shaped’, said Albert.  ‘Everything does, after a while.’”.

This piece didn’t sell quite as many as the Hogfather so there are a few unaccompanied Hogfathers out there.  I don’t have any details on numbers sold etc.  The piece was introduced in 1998 and was sculpted by Joe Pattison.  

Whilst checking over my Pixie Albert for this blog I noticed that it has a painters mark and the name of the sculptor etched into it, as usual but there was a gap where the trademark should have been.  These pieces were introduced in 1998 and were available until closure so there will be pieces with the stamp and pieces with the petwer trademarks.  My Hogfather has a normal stamp as it was produced before the pewter trademarks came out.  It seems my Pixie Albert has a little indentation ready for the pewter trademark to be attached but was overlooked for some reason.  I know the pieces is genuine as I bought it direct from Clarecraft and everything else on the piece is correct.  It is complete with sticker, box, tent card, painters mark and sculptors name.  I don’t know if Clarecraft overlooked an entire batch or just one or two.  It just goes to show I should have checked it when I got it and I could have asked them.  I used to just check ebay buys carefully in case they had old trademarks.  In later years I didn’t think it worth checking for an oddity!!!