A cabinet maker by day, Old devoted much of his spare time to his hobby, often working through the entire night on a model.
The Richold Collection may have had something of a base in the seaside resort of Brighton, East Sussex, because in 1931 Todd and his family moved from Scarborough to Woodingdean, Brighton where, according his daughter, Una Wilson (née Todd), her “father ran an exhibition of architectural models at the Royal Pavilion,"[8] and a later newspaper article refers to the owners having had it “on display amid the Regency splendour of Brighton's Royal Pavilion” at an earlier date.
[12] In 1952, the Birmingham Daily Gazette reported that eighteen packing cases containing "the Richold Collection of exhibition fretwork" had been destroyed in a fire in a timber warehouse in Blackwell Street, Kidderminster.
[13] The collection was owned by Bertram Coates, the owner of the warehouse, who had purchased it about ten years previously.
[14] The deal fell through, however, because the company also wanted to purchase the Richold Collection (on display on the West Pier, Brighton at that time) which she had “promised to the Middlesbrough Museum”.
[10] The Collection, by this time numbering "around 70 works", including the model of Milan Cathedral, was auctioned by Sothebey's, Summers Palace, Billingshurst, 6 March 1990.
[1] Newsreel footage of Mr. Todd talking about the Milan Cathedral model was made by British Pathé.
[16] Mr. Todd is not named as the presenter in the footage, however, his own account of being given the role rather unexpectedly when the model was taken to Pathé's studios in London is on record.