IMPERIAL PRODUCTIONS

This tiny Edwardian shop once housed Greytown’s bootmaker but now sells the evocative, hand-painted metal soldiers and colonial figures of illustrator and designer David Cowe. These scrupulously researched models range from the Napoleonic Wars to New Zealand’s military and colonial history, including Te Maori and the New Zealand Girls’ Khaki Brigade (pictured), a “perfect phalanx of Amazons”, as King Dick Seddon called them. David taught at the Wellington School of Design and studied at St Martin’s School of Art in London in the 60s. “The Kinks played at one of the school dances just before I got there,” he says. 5 McMaster St, Greytown, (06) 304 9625, imperialproductions.co.nz