Collecting: My Thoughts

I collect many things but my oldest and dearest passion has been horses - swap cards, paintings, prints, books and figurines.  It all began when my dad brought home a little china horse for me when I was three years old.  I don't imagine many dads would gift such a young child with so fragile an item, but he was quirky like that, and unbelievably, the figurine remains one of the few in my growing collection that has never been broken.  Clumsiness, kitties and a lot of moving have taken their toll over the years, but this has had an unexpected side benefit - I have learned a lot of ways to repair broken artifacts and people at my shop actually pay me to fix their stuff.

A lot of people collect plastic "model" horses - Breyers and Hartlands .  I did not even know the name Breyer until a couple of years ago, although I had had several in my collection for many years.  Breyers are very realistic looking (for the most part) and there is a massive community that has evolved around their collection.  They make outfits (tack and costumes) and have "horse shows" and take photos with realistic backdrops.  They make manes and tails from real hair and repaint the models with excruciating detail. I have little interest in this; I have my special old Breyers, that is enough for me.

Another community is built around the collection of Hagen Renaker porcelain figurines.  I have about a dozen, dating back to the early fifties, but, again, I did not know anything about them until recently.  Some were gifts but most were bought one at a time, when my dad had to go visit someone in the hospital in Rochester and I went along to keep him company. He rewarded me by taking me downtown to a little gift shop off of Main Street where they sold small china figurines and a good number of novelty items (magic tricks and pranks).  Most in this collection are tiny and spindly and very fragile - and all have at least one broken leg and some have lots of breaks.  I have always repaired them, using increasingly better adhesives as they have become available.

A few years back I acquired a collection of Breyer miniature Stablemates - it took me quite a while to realize that that many of these were identical to my little Hagen Renakers and I was baffled at such seeming design thievery.  I eventually discovered that Hagen Renaker had licensed some of their molds to Breyer for recasting in plastic.  Mystery solved!

Original favorites

In the above photo, Horse Number One is the one in the center.  Clockwise from the upper left is the porcelain foal given to me when I was very young by a little old lady from our church.  She said it had been hers since she was a little girl - I figure it must be almost 150 years old by now, and I have never seen another one like it.  The next one, with the saddle, was made in Japan as a souvenir of Niagara Falls.  Others like it are all over eBay every day.  The grouping of three are Hagen Renakers and designed by Tom Masterson.  The white and gold horse with the spaghetti trim is Queenie, one of the few named horses in my collection.  At least as far as eBay goes, she is pretty unique.  Below Queenie are a pair of Bergen hard plastic horses (I called them Black Beauty and Ginger), and the pair of pintos are salt and pepper shakers.  The jaunty black and white colt and the little white Trojan have always been amongst my favorites and I have had them as long as I can remember.

Current favorites

My taste seems to moved away from mostly realism towards mostly fanciful.  My current favorites all seem to have an artistic style to them.  The one in the middle is one-of-a-kind hand modeled, recently repainted by me because the original paint had become drastically soiled.  I was so delighted to find it in a thrift store.  Upper left is a beautiful pink and blue drip-glazed Royal Haeger, then my collection of little porcelain Trojans (thank you, eBay!), the red rearing horse and the two green rearing ones were designed by Don Manning and I have discovered that they are from the late forties, early fifties.  The little pink gal is a Hagen Renaker (I love her!), the row of colorful colts are also Don Mannings, the elongated green glass colts are made by Mosser, and the white mare and foal are a recent thrift store find.  Aren't they sweet?

I have become a savvy eBay shopper and I have made myself very happy winning these little treasures.   The Internet is proving to be a wondrous resource for researching the origins of my figurines, but much information is lacking. I wish more makers would placed identification marks on their creations!  Not stickers - stickers fall off!   Sadly, I have found only a few books on the collecting of horse figurines. Maybe some day I ought to write a book about the subject, but for now I am keeping myself busy documenting my entire collection.

I am lost in the admiration of the creation of these figures - how lovingly and cleverly and carefully they have been sculpted by such wondrous and mostly unsung artists!  I run my fingers over the elegant lines and shapes.  The beauty makes me smile every day.  I will sing their song.

Horse Collection 1956

Horse Collection 2014

The Equine Lexicon

(A brief essay on the influence of the horse in our language, which I began writing in 2005 when we did our first Art Horse fundraiser, and published on the Horsin' Around Rivendell pages of my website.  I have added to it every so often.)

Our culture’s relationship with the horse has given us many colorful words and phrases. These come from the horse itself as well as the gear and activities associated with the horse.

We refer to young girls as fillies (female foals), virile men as stallions or studs (male horses), a person who constantly harangues is called a nag (an old and worthless horse), and little girls and aging hippies wear their hair in pony tails. We indulge in horseplay when we are having too much fun. This is also called horsing around.   When a person behaves in an arrogant, haughty or disdainful fashion we say he is on his high horse.    When we can't seem to let go of an untenable notion it is known by the rather unsavory phrase beating a dead horse.
 

Over a hundred years since the invention of the automobile we name our cars after the horse. There are the Mustang, the Colt, the Charger , the Bronco and the infamous Pinto. Our car’s engines are rated by horsepower. When the automobile was first introduced it was called the horseless carriage and streetcars pulled by horses were called horse-cars. Our fascination with the power and mystery of the horse can be seen every day when we see car commercials on TV. Count the number of horses you see in one day’s worth of car commercials!

Another term for common sense is horse sense. Certain dancers have been called hoofers and when we decide to walk instead of drive, we are hoofing it. When we watch the Olympics we view gymnasts performing amazing feats on the pommel horse. The pommel is a part of a horse’s saddle. When we cut wood we use a saw horse. The term riding roughshod means to treat harshly and originates in a horse that has been shod with projecting nails (kinda like golf cleats).

A person with a long face, a lantern jaw and large teeth is derogatorily called horse-face. A person who is said to be very fond of his or her apparel is called a clothes horse.   Nonsense and silliness has been called horse feathers (think of the Marx Brothers). A slang term for a baseball is a horse hide, even though baseballs were never made from horse hide. A loud coarse laugh is called a horse laugh. Movies, TV shows and plays with a Wild West theme are called horse operas. A horse shoe is not just that piece of metal nailed to a horse’s hoof it also refers to anything that is U-shaped, including our own Horseshoe Falls.  When we go to the circus it is often held in a place called a hippodrome.  This comes from the ancient Greek and combines hippo (horse) and drome (race course).  The ancients held chariot races in hippodromes.

Speaking of race courses, a lot of words and phrases in our language come from the race track.  When we start an new project with a great flourish, we say we are off to the races.  A project in its infancy is just out of the starting gate.  When this project is going well, it is on track.  When we uphold the losing side, we have backed the wrong horse.  And when things get out of control we say it's anybody's horse race from here!

A shrewdly conducted bargain is still called a horse trade, to pony up means to settle an account, and a dark horse is not only a horse that comes out of nowhere to win a race but also a political candidate unexpectedly nominated.  When a person falls (or is thrown) from a horse there is much urging to get back on the horse  - that same phrase is used to encourage someone to overcome fear or doubt.  Riders often need a boost to mount a horse - this is the origin of the phrase leg up. The military even today uses the word dismount to describe getting out of a vehicle, a clear throwback to cavalry.  Also, the word cavalcade originally meant a procession of persons riding on horses.  When we promise to keep a secret we claim that wild horses couldn't drag it out of us.  When precautions are taken after a problem has occurred we refer to this as shutting the barn door after the horse has gone. When me mix up our priorities during a project this is commonly known as putting the cart before the horse.  In the four years that we presented Horsin' Around Rivendell, we accumulated a stable of artists.

A horse is controlled by its bridle and the attached reins. A laneway wide enough to accommodate a horse was called a bridle path.  In many subdivisions today there are streets called The Bridle Path which have never seen a horse!   We refer to unbridled passions or enthusiasm; we rein in our emotions or our spending.  We also use the term free rein to mean letting someone do what he pleases. The metal mouthpiece of the bridle is called a bit which curbs or restrains the horse.  A curb is also a type of bit, hence phrases like curb your enthusiasm.  When we say the phrase taking the bit in one's teeth, we mean casting off control.  When we say champing at the bit it means to betray impatience.   A rider sometimes wears spurs on his boots to urge the horse along.  We still use the phrase spurred on to indicate that we are being goaded into action.

The rider sits in the saddle and we often refer to being saddled with burdens or debt.  A person who is in the saddle is a person in a position of authority.  When we return to working after an absence, we say we are back in the saddle. Saddle shoes are oxfords with a band of a contrasting color across the instep.  For a horse to carry items, saddle bags are used (think Pony Express mail carriers).  Women with, ahem, hefty thighs sometimes refer to this extra "baggage" as saddle bags!  When some niggling little thing keeps bothering the heck out of you it is frequently referred to as a burr under your saddle. 

 Sometimes when we work too many hours we complain that we have been in harness too long.  A person overly attached to the notion of working is often called a work horse.  Another way of telling someone to leave well enough alone is to use the phrase don't switch horses in midstream.  You can imagine the problems that would arise from such an effort.

Words like corral, lasso and round-up all come from our Old West heritage. These words are frequently used to mean gather.

Horse of a different color has come to mean something that is entirely different. When we wish to restrain wild impulses we say hold your horses. When we receive news from a trustworthy source we say we have gotten it straight from the horse’s mouth.  Hot to trot means ready and eager, as does feeling one's oats.  A person who falls into a rage is said to be up on his hind legs, like a rearing horse.

A time-honored method of determining the age of a horse is to look into its mouth. The length and condition of the teeth reveal the age. Hence the phrase looking a gift horse in the mouth, meaning to question a gift. Not a good thing!  Carriage horses work long hours and are given food in nosebags or feedbags.  Hence, putting on the feedbag means to have a meal.
I will continue to add horse words as I think of them, but for now, I do not want to give anyone a nightmare so I will stop.  Well, how about one little Night Mare?

Night Mare, one of the first Art Horses I did for Horsin' Around Rivendell, 2005.

Portrait of Jenny (with apologies to Robert Nathan)

Jenny, Mr. Pugh, Gary, his dog and my dad's shadow

The faintest scent of sweet clover in the morning air sends me back in time to the Summer of '59.  That year we were able to rent a small dilapidated cottage in Lowbanks, Ontario for a whole week.  Right across the street from the pebbled beach and shining Lake Ontario.  We arrived long after dark (given my mother's aversion to riding in a car in the daylight) and located our musty beds without unpacking.

The next morning found my mom cleaning and straightening the shabby cottage, my dad blissfully eyeing the water, and me gazing across the weedy field to the farm next door where I spied Jenny.  A horse!  There was a horse next door!  I was so excited.

She was about as far away from The Black Stallion as a horse could get - she was terribly ancient, distressingly dusty, sway-backed and scarred.  But she was a horse!  And (for that week at least) she was mine, all mine.

The ragged and grizzled old farmer, rather aptly named Mr. Pugh, came out and must have seen the horse fever in my eyes.  He instructed me to gather the sweet clover from my side of her fence and present it to her.  He told me I would have a friend for life.  I don't even know how that mare could chew - her teeth were worn and yellowed, her lower lip hung down like an inner tube - but she eagerly devoured my offering and then seemingly drifted off into a state of equine  bliss.

Mr. Pugh was a working farmer.  He plowed with two horses, Jenny at age 32 and a feisty younger bay.  He did not use a tractor, he did not drive a car.  His ramshackle farmhouse was lit with kerosene lanterns and he cooked his meager meals on a coal stove. The story we later heard was that his wife had forbidden him to ever spend any of their money on "newfangled gadgets" and even after her death he kept his promise to her and lived his entire life like a homesteader. In the eighties I met a guy from Lowbanks; he told me that after Mr. Pugh died they found money stashed all over his house.

Of course I asked Mr. Pugh if I could ride Jenny and he apologized that he did not own a saddle, but he was kind enough to rig the harness reins on her bridle so, despite the blinders and the lack of saddle, I was able to "ride" her.  We spent many happy hours just moseying around her pasture; she went where she wanted to go and I was content to believe I was steering.  At least I know I was happy - I was on Cloud Nine and I like to think that she did not mind my presence as long as I kept her supplied with sweet clover.

During the week, Gary, a younger boy from the neighboring farm befriended me. He owned a very recalcitrant Shetland pony named Thunder, but he did not ride that pony as Thunder was not appreciative of being ridden.  While I am sure he thought I was quite insane, Gary rode Jenny with me sometimes.  Her bony back could have held three or four kids. 

My mother eventually persuaded me to "leave that poor horse alone" and my dad persuaded me to go in the water with him, but in that brief week I spent as many hours as I could with that sweet old soul.  When we returned to Lowbanks the following summer we found that my dear Jenny had gone on to horse heaven.

The scent of sweet clover will always bring to my mind the warm fragrance of that dusty old mare.  Rest in Peace dear Jenny.

When Wishes Were Horses (Part One)

Easter of 1958 found me, as I had been for years, in the throes of the unrequited love of horses.  I wanted a horse more than anything!  My dad told me he didn't think the parsonage committee would appreciate having a horse in the garage and I was partially mollified.

At the age of almost twelve, I had to satisfy myself with horse figurines and horse books.  My favorite book of all was Marguerite Henry's Album of Horses.  I took this out of the library as often as I was allowed (every once in a while the librarian convinced me to let someone else have a crack at signing it out).  I kept it for as long as it was possible and returned it again and again on the last possible day.

I spent hours and hours drinking in the glorious illustrations by Wesley Dennis.  The prancing Percheron, the leaping Lippizan, the amazing Arab.  I loved that book!

One day I was rummaging in the linen cupboard for a towel and what did I find but a brand new copy of Album of Horses tucked in amongst the towels.  I was flushed with excitement but deeply chagrined to have unearthed this awesome secret.  I tucked it carefully back into its hiding place.  Mom and dad would ever know I had made this discovery;  I would feign surprise at the presentation.

It was only years later that mom confided to me that they knew instantly that I had found the book when I returned the library copy before its due date!

The Ones That Got Away

Thrift shopping has been my passion since I was old enough to walk “downtown” by myself when we lived in Albion. (Downtown was about one block away from the parsonage.) On my route home from sixth grade I passed by what we used to call a “junk store” (which would now be called an “antique store”).

I loved this dimly lit, dusty (OK, filthy) over-crowded emporium. It was chock full of wonders. Walking through the aisles, I always had the impression that if I were to bump into the wrong thing I would be buried in an avalanche of junk. I spent many glorious hours poking around in there by myself, spending a nickel here and a dime there on little wonderful tchotchke (I never learned what my finds were called until decades later). One day it was like a dream come true when I peered through the grimy windows to see horse statues, large ones and small figurines, all over the entire store! I ran home, got some money from the sock half-full of coins that I kept in my bedroom, went back to the store and started buying up the horses. I bought ones for 10¢, I bought ones for 15¢, I bought ones for 25¢! I was in Horse Heaven!!!

I was unfortunately not the only one buying these precious statues so some of them got away from me, but I bought as many as I could as swiftly as I could manage it.

Finally, one horse remained - it was the kind of bronze statue that one would see on a mantle, and it was the famous racehorse Man o’ War. It was magnificent. But, alas, it was far beyond my meager budget - it cost a whole $9.00. I tried in vain to convince my parents to front me a couple years’ allowance so I could buy this treasure but they flatly refused my impassioned pleas. “$9.00 for a horse statue! Not on your life, young lady!”

I do still own and cherish the rest of the horses I bought from that junk store, but if anyone in my lifetime ever invents a time machine, I plan on going back and buying Man o’ War.

Fast forward to the early eighties. One day my hubby and his best friend and I were messing around in and out of all of the great little shops that then occupied Allen Street. We went into a used clothing store and I immediately spied the most wondrous coat that I had ever seen in my life.

This coat was pale peach-colored iridescent leather. The style was a fingertip length artist smock, with a Peter Pan collar and huge patch pockets. This marvel, lined with bright red and white striped silk, looked like Doris Day could have worn it in one of those Rock Hudson comedies. It was simply amazing and as an added bonus, it not only felt like glove-leather, it fit me as if it had been tailor made. My two male companions proceeded to make fun of me for even thinking of such a garment (this was in the days of Rocky Horror at the Granada when black first started becoming the new black) and with great reluctance (on my part, at least) we exited the shop empty handed.

I phoned the shop as soon as I returned home, not twenty minutes later, to tell them to hold this prize for me. Alas, the proprietor informed me that as soon as we had left the store, an older couple from out of town had come in and bought MY COAT for their granddaughter. Oh! The agony!

Two tough lessons learned in an otherwise successful lifetime of thrift shopping. You can always rethrift an unwanted item, but far better to regret a purchase than regret losing the find of a lifetime. Buy now or forever hold your purse.

The Best Christmas Ever

1952 was the year I turned six. I could steal a line from Dickens and say it was the best of times and the worst of times. My mom and I were taking turns being sick; she with what I now believe to have been severe and frequent migraines and me with the usual array of childhood maladies such as chicken pox, mumps, measles, croup, etc. I remember one event which resulted in my dad carrying me across the park in front of our parsonage to the town doctor who painted my mouth with some ghastly purple stuff. I found out many years later this purple stuff was gentian violet used as a cure for thrush.

I also remember having to be dosed with a daily spoonful of cod liver oil because I “needed iron.” I could never figure out what the iron had to do with the medicine, but my mom and I arrived at an unusual ritual for my dosing: I used to crouch under the kitchen table for this hated spoonful and she would thrust the spoon under the table. I was very happy to be pronounced well enough to be rid of it - although I can still recall that hideous oily taste. *Shudder*

In spite of all of these ailments, my folks and I shared a wondrous life together. Dad was the quintessential poor country preacher (who one summer painted the parsonage to supplement his meager salary) and mom, in training to be agoraphobic in addition to her other illnesses, was very lucky that the church was right next door to the parsonage (she hated having to ride in the car, always got motion sickness). She occupied her time trying to decorate the old farmhouse/parsonage and sewed clothing and curtains when she could get out of bed.  I guess we did not realize how awful our lives were so we simply enjoyed life and each other.

The school was just up the road and I could walk the half block or so and come home for lunch from kindergarten and then first grade. Part of our family lore, told to me many times, was that when I first started school I kept leaving and coming home because I wanted to “help my mommy” since she was so sick. My folks and the school officials had to convince me that it was OK for me to be gone a bit each day and that mom would be all right without my ministrations.

It was in this town also that my parents were forced to buy their first television, to keep me home at night. The neighbors two houses away used to invite me over after supper to watch Hopalong Cassidy and not unlike millions of other boomers, I was immediately sucked in to the Cowboy Way. The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and of course, all of these famous TV cowboys had famous TV cowboy horses: Topper, Silver, Trigger and Champion.

It was love at first sight! I wanted a six-gun, a cowboy hat, cowboy boots…and I wanted a horse!

Little by little I acquired the six-gun (but no holster, alas), and some sort of straw hat that masqueraded as a cowboy hat. But no horse seemed forthcoming. We could not afford a horse, of course, and my dad tried ever so gently to persuade me that the parsonage committee would not take to having to clean up after a real horse.

In the fall of 1952 I was suddenly banished from the basement. This did not bother me a great deal, as I recall, because it was one of those creaky old scary basements with the low-hanging furnace pipes and the finished part just kind of trailing off into dirt. The church basement was the same and I still have nightmares about it. I remember waking in the night hearing strange noises coming from the cellar but these also did not seem to bother me and any alarums of the night were forgotten in the light of day.

Well, as it turned out, my dad had decided to build me a rocking horse. He took pieces of wood from a sturdy old rocking chair and one of the men from the church cut out the head from a piece of plywood. My dad did all of the rest of the work himself, including the glossy black paint. My mother then made the thick black yarn mane and tail. Dad even managed to find some scraps of leather and rivet together a bridle.

My dad was not known for his skills with tools. Oh, he could handle a paintbrush all right, but he had never been one with any skill, knowledge or love of saws, planes, drills, screwdrivers, hammers and the like. (My paternal grandfather had been the tool guy who worked on the railroad; I have his toolbox today, with his initials in Morse code painted on the outside.)

So the fact that dad was able to create such a magnificent rocking horse for me was all the more amazing. My Black Beauty was so well built and sturdy that even though I weigh many times more today than I did back then, he still holds my weight. I marvel at the skill that came so unexpectedly from my dad’s love for me and from his desire to make me happy that year at Christmas.

Fleeting Glimpses (#3)

Nash Road, North Tonawanda/Wheatfield

Fleeting Glimpses (#1)

One lighthouse, three horses, one pig and the Liberty Bell.