This Sunday, in many countries around the world, people will celebrate Mother’s Day. This celebration seems a bit hard to combine with toy soldier collecting, but King and Country actually produced a lot of figures depicting mothers and childs. This week, we will have a look at one of those pieces: the HK253 - Mother & Child.

This piece is from the collection Streets of Old Hong Kong. This collection depicts the daily life of Hong Kong citizens as it was during the very late nineteenth century. When it was launched, this collection was clashing with the usual war themed toy soldiers. This was particularly appreciated by the collector’s wife when they were accompanying their husband to their favorite toy soldier store. Eventually, this collection became one of the most successful amongst women collectors, initiating many of them to this hobby. So, for Mother’s Day, choosing a piece from the Streets of Old Hong Kong was almost mandatory.

The HK253 - Mother & Child shows a young mother carrying her child on her back. She is feeding her kid while walking and holding her umbrella. The beauty of this piece not only comes from the relation between the two characters, but also from the detailed painting job. It is richly decorated with fine hand painted details to recreate patterns on the fabrics and decorative embroidments. The back of the traditional chinese baby carrier (Mei tai) is probably the best part, with the cute animals and plants.

This piece is not the only one depicting a mother with her child. In fact, this is a recurrent thing amongst the pieces of King and Country. Once a in a while, a variation on that theme pops out in a different collection. Here are few other examples:

AE042 - Mother And Son

LOJ046 - Woman & Baby

VN054 - Mother & Child

RnB003 - The Farewell

DD350 - Victims Of The Purge - Mother & Child

LOJ041 - Mary, Joseph & The Infant Jesus

As we can see, toy soldiers and mothers are working quite well together. This might seem counterintuitive at first, but it’s actually a fertile theme and could probably be the subject of a whole collection on its own. So I wish Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers out there.