Christmas in July

For those lucky enough to go, Breyerfest and/or Equilocity constitute Christmas in July.  The rest of us have to wait for the traditional December celebration.

Christmas-themed model horses, however, can be enjoyed all year round.

Both Breyer and Stone regularly release a bonanza of Christmas horses to celebrate the season, and both Hartland Plastics and Hagen-Renaker have each produced much sought-after Nativity sets which include, of course, a stable donkey.  Sheryl Leisure's Hartland L.L.C. also issued a number of Christmas-themed Tinymites for a couple of years.

Most people don't routinely include horses in their Christmas decorating.  The Nativity donkey, yes, that's a mainstay of many Christmas decorations.  But horses?  An awkward fit, at best.

Unless, of course, you're a model horse collector.

Christmas decoration models run the gamut from unrealistic colours, compositions, and conformation, to ultra-realistic horses decorated with plausible ribbons, bows, blankets, and halters in holiday themes and colours.

My own collection includes only Breyer Christmas decorations so far.  At one time I had a Stone Christmas horse -- the trotting drafter -- but I sold him years ago.

As far as the Breyers go, I have a pretty good representation of Christmas models, although I only have one of the Traditional-sized Christmas horses:  the Misty with the sleigh.

However, to go with it I have four of the Beautiful Breed porcelain ornaments (the Welsh Pony, the Friesian, the Quarter Horse, and the Clydesdale) and four Stablemate ornaments (both versions of Father Christmas on the Andalusian -- bay and grey, Santa on the Jumping Horse, and Santa on the Cow Pony).

My first Breyer Christmas purchases, though, were the Stablemates hitched to the holiday carts -- the Holiday Sleigh and the musical Holiday Wagon.

Holiday Sleigh overflowing with goodies

Even though they're hitched to their carts with just a suggestion of a harness, I find the Stablemate horse-drawn vehicles completely irresistible.  And because my first two carts were drawn by Paso Finos, I now use Paso Finos to draw all the other carts I've acquired along the way.

Holiday Sleigh Paso Fino

When it comes to actually doing Christmas decorating, I've used the Misty, the Stablemate ornaments, and the Stablemate carts in my decoration.  I've never used the Beautiful Breeds horses, however.  Even when I use an artificial tree, I find that they're just too heavy to hang securely on a limb and I've learned to my loss that these porcelain pretties can't survive even a gentle fall.  My Clydesdale took a tumble and lost both ears as he insisted on landing head-first on the linoleum.  I'm no sculptor, so my patch-up job doesn't exactly pass muster, although I prefer it to his formerly naked pate.

Every Christmas, it seems, Breyer comes out with something else to tempt me.  Over the years I've resisted the glass ball ornaments, the stirrup ornaments, the carousel horses, the angel horses, and the snow globes.

But my resistance is weakening.  I find myself wishing now that I had bought a couple of angel fillies, or committed myself to the carousel series.  But most of all, I find myself inexplicably yearning for a snow globe.  Not a collection of them:  just one really nice one to sit on the table as a conversation piece all holiday -- perhaps even all year -- long.

This year's snow globe features two horses jumping over a stone wall fence, with Santa in a sleigh trotting around the base.  Maybe this could be the year for me -- all I know is that this particular snow globe is hitting me in all the right places.  Maybe, at last, it's time for me to shake things up this Christmas.

Such are my sugarplum dreams in the heat of the summer sun.

Is That a Box in Your Pocket, or ...?

In honour of Discovery Channel's "Shark Week" (hey, if Peter Stone can do it, then so can I) I want to take a brief look at one of Breyer's latest acquisitions: the Pocket Box series.

To date, Breyer has issued a Pocket Box Aquarium, a Pocket Box of Animals, a Pocket Box of Dogs, and a Pocket Box of Cats.

The boxes themselves are incredibly cute.  As a child I'm sure I would have coveted the entire collection, just for the fun of having all those boxes.  Also, the animals that you find in them are comparable to the sort of Farm Set and Zoo Set animals I played with as a child (in other words, not particularly accurate animal replicas).

Ironically, the various Aquarium critters (including a couple of sharks -- thus the tie-in with "Shark Week") may be the best modeled of the bunch.  I say this is ironic because it seems to me that of all the boxes on offer, the Aquarium has the least attraction for model horse collectors.  The Cats and Dogs can be used in stable and farmyard scenes, and the Animals series includes one horse-shaped object (HSO) and a zebra.  But what can a model horse fancier do with fish?

That being said, there is one "horsey" item in the Aquarium set -- the seahorse.  It's actually a nicely sculpted little creature, although wildly out-of-scale with any other horse-shaped object in Breyer's catalogue.

My Pocket Box seahorse

I'm not quite sure what possessed Breyer/Reeves acquire the Pocket Box license.  They are, as I have said, attractive little toys, but the Mini Whinnies that Breyer acquired previously are a much better match in the tiny toy area for their market.

Also, I understand that the Pocket Boxes are actually Italian in origin, and if you check out the parent company Suk you will see that among other things they also offer a Horses and Pony Pocket Box, which Breyer has not apparently yet acquired.  Perhaps they will in the future?  If they're going to continue to expand the Pocket Box line, I certainly hope so.

The Horses and Pony Pocket Boxes seem to include both real and fantasy horses -- hitting both of Breyer's target markets -- and although it's hard to tell, they seem to include better sculpts than the Animals' HSO.

My Pocket Box kitty with cat bed

I like to have a sample of most Breyer offerings in my collection, so I have one each of the Aquarium, Dog, and Cat Pocket Boxes.  I've steered clear of the Animals so far as they seem to have the worst sculpts of the lot, but I probably would not have added any at all if I hadn't first received them in a couple of the Grab Bags I've purchased from Breyer.  However, I haven't had any problems at all passing along the extras I've received -- they are very cute toys and quite easy to forward to a critter-loving kid.  So I don't mind at all that the Pocket Box critters have intruded into my life; as far as I can see, it's win-win all the way around.

And that's better than a swim with a shark any day of the week!

My Pony Has A Drinking Problem

When I wrote about my conga of Breyer Shetland ponies the other day, I left one little guy out.  He's not a Breyer, and not actually part of the conga, but he does bear a remarkable resemblance to the rest of the gang.

This is "Whisky Jack," my pony with a drinking problem:

"Whisky Jack" is one of a number of horse-shaped whisky decanters created by Hoffman Distilling in the late 1970s.  Not all of their designs are knock-offs of Breyer horses, but most of them are.

Of course "Whisky Jack" is not a direct copy.  For one thing he's much more masculine than the sexless Breyer Shetland.  He's also much tinier, approximately half the size.  But at first glance you can tell where the inspiration came from.

See the resemblance?

 
Breyer-inspired liquor decanters from other distillers are well-known among hobby enthusiasts.  There's the Ezra Brooks' Balking Mule decanter and of course the famous McCormick Old Timer decanter which featured an actual Breyer Old Timer "hitched" to his favourite tipple.  And Germany's Global Whisky and Spirits bottled Speyside Malt and others in a series of decanters apparently based on Breyer and Schleich figurines.

Hartlands have also been used, like the Old Timer, to pair with alcohol in various point-of-purchase displays.  The Hartland 9-inch Mustang has been paired with Mustang Malt Liquor beer in both cans and bottles, and of course Budweiser has a host of promotional material featuring Clydesdales, at least one of which was crafted by Hartland specifically for Budweiser.

In England, too, two special Beswick horses were cast for beer promotions -- the "Whitbread Shire" and the White Horse Whisky horse.  White Horse also has a number of point-of-purchase items featuring plastic horses, including one that looks a lot like a Breyer/Hagen-Renaker classic Swaps.

I've often thought that these brewery- and distillery-related figurines would make a great entry point into the hobby for otherwise uninterested husbands, boyfriends, or any male significant others.  Guys are well known for searching out such items for their "man caves" -- what harm could it do to gently nudge them into an equine collection direction?  The alcoholic equines could be borrowed when needed for a great Collector's Class entry, but for the rest of the time they could happily reside in the cave.  It might at least be worth a try, unless your guy is a recovering addict or an abstainer.

But then again, maybe it would work for them too.  After all, I very rarely take a nip of anything alcoholic, and I still proudly display my boozy Shetland.

I guess it just goes to disprove the old adage: it seems that not only can you lead a horse to water, but you can indeed make him (a) drink.

Another Kind of Hobby Horse

The term "hobby horse" has a number of meanings.  It is most commonly used to refer to a stick horse, a kind of antique toy still in use today consisting of a horse head shape on the top of a long stick that a child can straddle and pretend to ride while trotting around on his or her own two feet.  Its second most popular meaning refers to a person's pet topic or area of concern -- something that someone is willing to talk about and/or argue over at a moment's notice.

Model horse collectors once had access to a magazine called The Hobby Horse News that featured interesting articles on all aspects of collecting and showing model horses.  Its logo was a rocking horse, which is also sometimes referred to as a "hobby horse".

Since collecting, customizing, and showing model horses is, in fact, a hobby, all of our little horse figurines might quite properly be called our hobby horses.  But clinky collectors in particular use the term "hobby horse" to indicate a ceramic horse made from a plaster mold sold by a specific supplier to be used by home handicrafters of ceramics.

Hobby mold horses can be stunningly beautiful or simple horse-shaped objects, depending on the skills and intentions of their decorators.  The horses shapes themselves are usually proprietary -- owned by the company that produces the molds -- but some of them are copies of horses originally produced by other companies, like Breyer, Beswick, Hartland, and Hagen-Renaker.  The copies I've seen have never been close enough to the originals, though, to be confused for them by someone who knows what to look for in the real thing.

I have three of these hobby horses in my collection -- actually five if you count my two Silly Horses from Jessica Fry's J's Critters workshop, but I just count them as decorations rather than as members of my hobby herd.

Two of the hobby horses I have were painted by friends of mine.  The third is one I picked up in a deal that resulted from following up an ad on Kijiji.

Holland Arabian

My first is an Arabian-type horse painted by a former co-worker who was a ceramic artist in her spare time.  When she found out that I collected horses she generously offered to paint a couple for auction prizes for a live show I was hosting at the time.  To thank her for her donation, I bought one of her horses myself.  It's a Holland Ceramics mold, painted a lovely soft buttermilk dun.

Levade Hunter

My second hobby horse is a Levade Ceramics hunter mold, finished in pastels by one of my first model horse friends.  She, too, does ceramics as a hobby and offered to do one for me.  Pastel work is something way outside of my comfort zone, so I'm quite impressed by the quality of the color of this piece.

White Horse Drafter

My last hobby horse is the Kijiji one.  How I got him is a complicated story, but basically what happened is that I found a Beswick horse for sale on Kijiji that was being offered at a price I thought was too good to pass up.  Before I contacted the seller I decided to look at what else she might be selling, just in case she was liquidizing a collection or something like that.  It turned out that she did have one other horse for sale, a draft horse I'd never seen before.  Unable to meet with the seller myself, I dispatched my brother to go and pick up the Beswick for me, and to see if he could get some kind of a deal if he took the drafter too.  He did just that, and so both horses joined me temporarily in my home.

I actually bought them both with the idea of selling them on as the lack of real estate in my china cabinet just didn't allow me to keep them both.  The Beswick did sell quite quickly, but I've had no nibbles of interest on the drafter.  I have, however, discovered what it is -- a White Horse Ceramics drafter mold.

It's so big that it doesn't fit in my china cabinet, but it's big enough and solid enough to stand rather securely on an open shelf.  It's one of those horses that I look at every day as it stands beside the television in my living room, and looking after it day after day I find myself speculating on how it came to be.

The seller herself was apparently not the artist.  When she sold it to my brother she thought maybe it was one of those English china draft horses you often see hitched to dray wagons -- usually made by Melba Ware.  She also thought it might have originally been one of a pair, although she was sure she didn't have another one in her home.

It's very delicately painted.  There are a couple of areas where the paint obviously bubbled and popped in the kiln, leaving bare round spots in the finish.  But the paint work is quite lovely, with very natural shading and blending between the honey bay coat and the white markings.  The eyes in particular intrigue me -- they're of the top line and dot variety that you most often see on Made In Japan horses.  What kind of a painter, I wonder, would paint such a delicate coat and yet go for such simple eyes?  Was the person copying a Made in Japan model, or perhaps trying to mimic a Hagen-Renaker horse look (since some H-R minis also have these simple eyes)?  Or was this a ceramic artist who painted eyes like these on everything with eyeballs?

The mystery of it has made this particular hobby horse grow on me.  With all my other hobby horses, I know who painted them and why.  This large drafter is something of a refugee from parts unknown, but now, having crossed my threshold, he's beginning to look more and more like he's here to stay.

Down for the Count

For no particular reason, I was thinking about congas the other day.

A "conga" in collector-speak is a line up of model horses manufactured out of a single mold in a variety of colours and finishes.  Since most model horses are displayed shoulder to shoulder rather than nose to tail, the resulting formation of horses is really more like a chorus line than a conga line, but "conga" is a handy term, and has come to be used as both a collective noun (a conga of horses) and as a verb (to conga a particular mold of horse).

To have a complete conga of any one mold is a nearly impossible dream.  Even once the mold in question is destroyed, as Alborozo most famously was, it may continue to show up as a limited special runs or one-of-a-kind models -- in fact, the rarer the model the more difficult the mold itself becomes to conga.  If a mold that you conga turns up as a Breyer collectors' event model or, worse still, as a Breyerfest auction model, you can practically wave good-bye to your complete conga dreams.  And no one really knows how many different molds have been used to make test colour models; we only find out about them when they turn up on the marketplace.

The only sensible thing to do in such a situation is to limit your conga in some way.  I've done this myself with the one mold I intentionally conga:  the Breyer Traditional Shetland Pony.  I currently consider my conga to be complete, but I can only do so by ignoring certain things.  Firstly, I don't count any test colours or Breyerfest auction items as part of my "complete" conga.  I also discount the ultra-rare grey appaloosa Shetland.  If I did find one of them "in the wild" I would happily add it to my collection, but the handful of times I've seen one come on the market they've been going for thousands (yes, thousands) more than I'd ever be willing to pay for a piece of injection-molded plastic.

Cute Attack!  My Shetland Pony army on the march.

I also have no particular desire to collect different finishes of the same colour -- matte or gloss makes no difference to me -- nor am I looking to collect small variations, such as the solid-faced bay vs. the blaze faced bay on the no. 23 bay Shetland pony.  Again, as with the appaloosa, should I run across a solid face somewhere by accident, or happen upon a really different shade of the no. 22 palomino pinto, I'd probably add one to my conga, but for now having one ordinary blaze-faced no. 23 and one pale palomino pinto no. 22 is enough for me.

Shetlands standing shoulder to shoulder

Anyway, what got me thinking of congas was not really my own conga, but an idle question that wandered through my head: What, I wondered, is the easiest Breyer horse to conga?

It didn't take me long to come up with an answer.  Discounting oddballs like the hairy Thelwell pony "Kipper," and leaving aside unfinished craft kit horses and horses made in any media other than plastic, the simplest Breyer horse to conga has to be the Classic Reflections (sometimes called "Aged") Mesteño mold.  The poor old guy has only had one release -- the original no. 481 from 1996.  I used to have a complete conga of this mold, but I sold him some time ago.

Of course, if you ask what is the easiest Breyer equine to conga, then the Companion Animal miniature donkey is also a contender, having so far been released only once, as the no. 1522 Miniature Sicilian Donkey.  Expanding the question to include all Breyer critters brings in a number of dogs, birds, and other animals -- making in impossible to provide any kind of meaningful answer.

What, then, is the most difficult Breyer horse to conga?  Well, there's no way I could answer this without recourse to both Penny Lehew's and Felicia Browell's Breyer Animal Quick Reference book and Janice Cox's Identify Your Breyer database, but having nothing more urgent to do one day, I decided to try and make a count.

The answer I've come up with is the Fighting Stallion with at least 97 distinct variations (including this year's Breyerfest auction horse), many of them one-offs or incredibly rare.  My count might be off a bit, and may not tally with yours as I haven't counted the glossy alabaster with little shading and the glossy alabaster with extensive shading as different horses, while I have counted the woodgrain and the woodgrain lamp as being two different beasts.

It's also possible that I somehow missed a horse with more variations (after an afternoon of counting, one's eyes tend to glaze over), but in any case I think we can all agree that amassing a complete conga of Fighting Stallions would be a phenomenal feat.

Also, I think I'd be a little frightened of the person determined enough to do it.

What Do the Simple Folk Do?

I think I've mentioned a couple of times before that I am not any kind of an artist.  Nor am I particularly crafty.  I don't sew, I'm not good with tools, I fight with glue and putty, and I can just barely handle a paintbrush.

So what can simple folk like myself do to get creative with model horses?

Well, I've found one thing that is "sort of" within my skill set and another thing that I'm quite keen to try.

The first thing is etching.

Now, there are some phenomenal etchies out there -- some horses with decorator patterns etched onto them and some horses etched into intricate pintos and appaloosas.

I own one pretty awesome etched appaloosa done by Judith Miller on a Montana Harvest (Justin Morgan mold).  I acquired this one secondhand because I love appies, and this one is quite a stunner.  And I know the work that goes into etching, because I've tried my hand at etching too.

An etched appaloosa.

Back in 2000, during my sole sojourn at Breyerfest, I signed up for an etching workshop led by Deb Buckler.  Participants were warned ahead of time to bring a model to etch -- I can't remember now whether we also had to bring our own X-Acto knives or if they were provided for participants' use during the workshop.

Anyway, we were each provided with a sketch of horse hair patterns and encouraged to etch these onto our model horses.  I brought along a Classic Arabian Foal from one of the Arabian Stallion and Frisky Foal sets to work on (from that weird era when Breyer was mixing different scales of horses in sets -- see also the Circus Extravaganza and Proud Mare and Newborn Foal sets).  I got a very good start on him at Breyerfest and finished him off at home.  I called him "Fetch" (for First etch).  He's not in the same class as Judith Miller's work, but the fact that he's my own work makes him precious to me.

My first (and only) attempt at etching, circa 2000.

Unfortunately, I haven't gone on to do any more etchies since.  However, etching is now something that I know I can do. And, should I need a refresher, the Breyer website features a couple of cool articles on etching for those who want to learn more about it.

The second method of customizing I found that made me think "Hey, I could do that" is the art of creating decorators by pouring different colours of acrylic paint, thinned with water and dish soap, over a model horse.  Believe it or not, I found out about this neat idea on the Breyer website kid's page.

I recently bought a horse that I believe was created by this method by fellow Canadian Twyla Wehnes.  My horse is a Stablemate G3 Rearing Andalusian stallion covered in drips and drops of green, red, blue and yellow.  I don't normally go for green horses, but this guy is cool.  I like to think of him as a hippocampus, or mer-horse, who, like the little mermaid, sold his soul to a sea-witch for a pair of hind legs.  The drippy colours are his brightly coloured scales melting away as he transforms into an earth-horse shape.

A hippocampus in the process of transformation?

I haven't tried doing one of these "pour ponies" (as Twyla calls them) myself, but it's on my to-do list for the next time I get feeling a little creative.  I just might invest in some of those Breyer Paint and Play unicorns and see what kind of fantasy creatures I can come up with.  Maybe I'll even pour acrylics over one and then etch out a spotted pattern on it, combining the two finishes I feel like I might just be able to achieve.


Who knows? With techniques this simple maybe even someone like me can create a mini work of art.

Now We Are Six

It was only a few blog posts ago (in my "Resin Resistance" post) when, talking about my five tiny resins, I boldly predicted that my next resin would probably come in the form of a contest or raffle prize, because I never actively shop for resins.

Fortunately, I hedged my bets by admitting that if I was in the right place at the right time, you never know what might happen.

Well, it happened ... and now we are six.

How can I explain it?

Well, what happened is this:

We Canadians have our own Facebook page for selling and trading model horses with each other.  I browse this page every once in a while, mostly looking to see if I have anything on my shelves that other people are looking for, as I seriously need to make more room on my shelves.  I'm almost never looking to buy, but when I logged on the other day the first thing that caught my eye was this beautiful Lynn Fraley "Chickory" resin painted by Jami Worms.

Picture from the sales page: photo by Jami Worms/KatieQ Customs

Jami Worms is the fantastic artist behind KatieQ Customs who just happens to live in the same province as I do.  I've seen some of the work that she's done for friends of mine and have been more than impressed with her stuff.  So I've been yearning for one of her horses for quite some time now, but her books always seem to be closed and I didn't really have a good body to send away for painting anyway.

So this little guy had everything going for him all at once -- he's a Lynn Fraley sculpt (and I love Lynn's work), he's a pony (and I'm a sucker for ponies), and he was painted by Jami Worms (an artist whose work I admire).  How could I resist?

The answer is simple:  I couldn't.

My newest resin: "Birling Bright Water," a British Spotted Pony

So my grand total of tiny resins is now six.

And no one could be happier about it than me.

Airborne

Show Jumping is my favourite equestrian sport.  Like pretty much any equestrian sport you can name, there's a bit of risk involved for both the equine and human athletes.  But compared to other jumping sports like cross-country eventing or steeplechase racing, it's a relatively tame sport.  And I'm convinced that the horses who excel in it really do enjoy jumping.  I've seen enough refusals to know that you can't make a horse jump when it doesn't want to.  But the best of those who want to also want to do it well, and have been known to sulk or fret if they accidentally knock down a rail.

There's a lot for a spectator to enjoy about show jumping.  The inventive and colourful obstacles can be beautiful, and it's fascinating to watch the strategies each rider takes as he or she manoeuvres through the course -- leaving out strides here, taking a tight turn there, risking a flat out gallop and then bringing the horse back into balance before the next jump.  But by far the best bit about show jumping is watching the horse and rider go airborne, soaring over the obstacles as if defying the laws of gravity.  It's amazing the amount of "air time" some horses manage to achieve over a jump -- it's as if time hangs suspended along with the horse in mid-air.

Despite my great love of show jumping, though, I have relatively few model jumpers in my collection.  By that I don't mean standing representations of show jumpers, or jumpers at the walk, trot, or canter, but airborne show jumpers -- horses in that miracle moment as they fly through the air to take the jump.

The problem is that as much as I love the sight of jumpers over fences in real life, when translated into sculptures I find most representations of show jumping disappointing.  The puzzle that every sculptor has to work out when designing a flying show jumper is how to give the impression of flight while still giving the horse a solid base to stand on.  This could be why there are relatively few sculptures of jumping jumpers out there.

In china sculptures, the answer is usually to perform some kind of cheat -- anchoring the horse to its jump by the belly or feet while trying to give the impression that the horse is, in fact, clearing its obstacle.

Breyer used this cheat too in their first plastic jumping horse, having his belly scrape his stone wall base.  Actually, given the rustic look of the base, the Breyer Jumping Horse doesn't look much like a show jumper at all -- he's more of a field hunter than anything else.

Breyer Jumping Horses used as bookends.

The Breyer Jumping Horse debuted in 1965, and he had no competition in the Breyer plastic jumper category until 2005 when Breyer acquired the Creata Micro Mini molds with its two small jumpers.  In 2006 Breyer released the G3 Stablemate Jumper, followed up two years later with the release of the pony Newsworthy in 2008.  This was followed by a 10-year-drought until Bristol (2018) was added to the Traditional line-up, and he really didn't become widely available until the mid-year release of Voyeur this year.

The sculptors of all of Breyer's airborne jumpers after the original Jumping Horse have solved the suspension problem by mounting their horses on clear plastic bases.  This is a boon for performance showers, who are then freed up to design or purchase their own obstacles for their jumpers.  For those who only display their models, though, the base can sometimes look a little odd.  For my taste, the simpler the base the better.  The arrow-like designs of the bases on the Stablemate and Mini Whinnies please me better than Newsworthy's wave or Bristol's bizarre spiral.

For this reason, my sum total of Breyer jumpers is two Jumping Horses (one old and one newer) and two G3 Stablemates (one Collectors' Club and my NaMoPaiMo horse).  I also have a Micro Mini Jumping Thoroughbred and Morgan, but they're the Creata ones, not the Breyer Mini Whinnies.

My Creata Jumping Thoroughbred

My Creata Jumping (part-bred) Morgan

I might add a Newsworthy someday if I spot one that I just have to have, but so far none have hit me that hard.  But I can't see room for Bristol, unless he comes out with a different sort of stand.

I have one other plastic jumping horse -- the Stone Sporthorse -- where the sculptor/designer has decided to use both the clear plastic rod and a jump as a base to support the horse.  Initially (in 1997), this horse came with a heavy resin log jump, making the horse a cross-country eventer.  It wasn't long, though before they switched this out with a simple white wooden jump, which the buyer could easily customize with their own colours or designs if desired.  Given the choice, I went for the simpler wooden fence myself.

Decorating with Jumpers -- the Stone Sporthorse

It's lovely, but like my Breyer Jumping Horses it takes up a lot of shelf room.  That's why not one of those three are displayed on my model horse shelves.  I use them as decorations in my living room -- the two Breyers acting as bookends and the Stone perching on my stereo cover.  They're lucky horses actually, because while the horses on my model shelves tend to suffer from benign neglect, I sit and gaze happily at my three jumpers every single day.

Unless, of course, there's show jumping on TV.  Then my eyes and thoughts are elsewhere, flying over the obstacles that flash in front of me as if I, too, had the ability to suddenly become airborne.

Knock, Knock

I don't know why, but I'm a big fan of knock-off model horses.  I'm sure I wouldn't be if I were a sculptor having my works stolen and copied for the profit of others, but as a collector I get a peculiar kind of thrill finding a knock-off of a familiar and beloved model.

I don't know of any major model horse manufacturer that doesn't have its knock-offs, except perhaps the most recent ones on the market.  All the old-timers -- like Beswick, Breyer, Hagen-Renaker, and Hartland -- have their imitators, some nearly as nice as the originals and others laughably far off the mark.  Somewhere in my collection I have knock-offs of each of these companies' wares.

Original creators are entirely within their rights to try to stop copies from being created.  Because copies are, almost by definition, lesser than the originals, creators can certainly be forgiven for fearing that the existence of shoddy copies in the marketplace might devalue the originals.  Such a fear may well have been behind Hagen-Renaker's initial demands that Breyer cease and desist production of their old mold Proud Arabian Mares and Foals, which were clearly copies of H-R's large DW Zara and Zilla (the Family Stallion was also a copy of the large H-R DW Amir, but not, apparently, one close enough to the original to warrant its recall).  When the H-R molds reappeared in the Breyer line, it was with H-R's permission and, presumably, some kind of payment arrangement. 

 

Safari Rearing Arabian                                                            Safari Standing Drafter           

   

Today, however, I want to focus on a couple of copies that surprised me when I first came in contact with them.  Back in 2005 I was looking for some cheap Horse-Shaped Objects (HSOs) to attach to the wrappings of some Christmas gifts I was exchanging with my model horse friends.  At a local craft store I found a Safari Horse Toob packed with 14 different HSOs that looked just about right for my purposes.  Most of these HSOs were original sculptures, but two of them I recognized as copies of Creata Winner's Choice Micro Minis by Candace Liddy -- specifically the Standing Drafter and the Rearing Arabian.  The Creata Micro Minis had debuted in 1997 and reappeared as Breyer's Mini Whinnies in 2005.  The Safari knock-offs dated from 2002, so they were created some time between the demise of the Creata horses and the debut of the Breyer ones.

When I met Candace Liddy at a live model horse show in 2011, I remember hearing her mention that she knew of a bunch of knock-offs of her designs that were out there, but that getting the various manufacturers to cease and desist was a next-to-impossible task.  I can't imagine how frustrating that must have been.  However delightful knock-offs are to consumers like me, we can never forget that they are still thefts.

I don't think Safari sells this particular Toob any more.  They seem to have revamped their Toobs around 2017-2018 and their current Horse Toob contains only 12 horses -- none of which I recognize.  They also have a Horses and Riders Toob that, like the new CollectA Boxes, feature miniaturized versions of some of their larger horses.

Creata Rearing Arabian                                                            Creata Standing Drafter 

My two knock-off Micro Minis/Mini Whinnies are built on a slightly larger scale than Candace Liddy's sculptures, and get their main body colour from the colour of their plastic rather than the colour of their paint.  They are somewhat coarser than the originals, particularly the Rearing Arab with his weirdly bell-shaped hooves, but for all that they have going against them, I do find them appealing in an odd sort of way.  Of all the model horses there are out there to copy, it seems so odd for Safari to have chosen to copy only two of the 32 designs released by Creata.  What was it about those two, I wonder, that made them irresistible to their copiers?

I'm not even sure what makes them irresistible to me -- I just know that it's so.  I'm bemused by them, and they bring me the same kind of joy you might experience spotting an old friend in an unexpected place.  Perhaps it's just knowing that someone else out there admired the original as much as I do, and felt compelled to copy it.  The admiration may have come from a eye focused on profit, but it must have been admiration all the same.

Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery.  It's just not, perhaps, the nicest form for flattery to take.