Little and Large

A brief aside here before I launch into our regularly scheduled topic:  I'm not offering a lot of opinions or information about this year's Breyerfest since I'm not actually going.  But I do have to give a little shout-out to the news that there's going to be a classic-sized RCMP Musical Ride horse for sale at Breyerfest.  He's on the new "Liam" (Stock Horse Gelding) mold and cute as a button -- you can even see that there's a miniature maple leap stenciled on his hindquarters just like his Big Ben big brother.  I guess this really is a case of "little and large" after all, but it wasn't what I really meant to talk about.  But -- way to go Canada, anyway (eh?)!

Now, what I really meant to talk about today are the littlest and largest model horses in my collection.  The littlest one that's in my collection would probably be the Micro Mini or Mini Whinny grazing foal, in 1:64 scale.  I think I actually have a few toy horses that are smaller than this, but I've never named them and never counted them as part of my collection.

My Micro Mini grazer "O'Reilly"

I've decided that the Micro Mini grazing foal is the smallest of the lot because, although the Micro Mini sitting foal has his body lower to the ground, he's raised his head to make him a tiny bit higher than the head-down grazer.  If we measured only by withers height, the sitter would be the smallest, but from hoof to highest sculpted point, the grazer just manages to out-weeny him.

My Beswick Large Race Horse "The Chestnut"

My largest horse, likewise, is not quite as substantial as the second runner-up, a hobby mold Clydesdale I recently acquired, but he stands taller at the eartips.  This is one of my prize models, the Beswick large race horse, who stands 12 inches high.  I'm not quite sure what scale this is, but it might be close to Breyer's largest scale -- the 1:6 scale Springtime Foal.  My Marx Best of the West horses would be 1:6 scale as well, and the same scale is used for some military modellers.  The largest model horse I've ever seen (discounting ride-on horses, carousel horses, and those life size fiberglass horses used for decorations or for modelling real horse tack) is one I saw on YouTube.  Called the Biggest Model Horse in the World, it features a model that is apparently 1:6 scale as well, but it looks absolutely massive.  If I were still attending live shows I would love to have one of these to plonk down on a table just for the Godzilla-like effect it would have.

Most of the live model horse meets and shows that I've ever attended don't break classes up by scale, although that's changing now with the increasing popularity of miniature resins.  Still, it's very hard to judge one size against another.  The larger your model is, the more canvas the artist and sculptor have to work with, and therefore the greater details they can produce.  Artists who enjoy working in miniature can produce amazing details on micro sized horses too, but there's just not a lot of space for both whisker bumps and lip crinkles, or hairy fetlocks and perfect feet.  Judged against one another, it would be difficult to choose between a little and a large horse -- you'd tend to want to weigh in favour of the tiny one because of the intricacy of the work, but the more visible details on the bigger horse might be just as stunning and much easier to see.  No wonder the Traditional-sized horse (1:9 scale) remains the Breyer staple, and is also the preferred size for Stones, Copperfox, and even some Hartlands. Their size simply increases their impact.

Despite the ever-growing acceptance of miniature models, loved for their portability among live show attendees and for their small shelf footprint by collectors in general, the big guys are probably here to stay.  Popping a Lilliputian pony on a table next to a magnifying glass has a little bit of a "wow" factor associated with it, but pulling out the big guns is always a sure recipe for "shock and awe."  

If you want to make a big impression, bigger is almost always better.

But if you're seriously wanting to "downsize" your herd, you might want to hang on the little fellows.  Petite is still sweet, after all.