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.