Back in February, I posted some research into the real "Nataf", known among ceramic collectors as a very large San Marcos era Hagen-Renaker Designer's Workshop model. More information has found its way here, via blog readers and recent personal library acquisitions. Cindy Turner even surprised me with an original San Marcos pricelist!
I love the format of a blog, in that I can endlessly add and correct data, and it keeps a running record of when and how new data came to our collective online awareness. Nothing is ever set in stone, we are always learning. You, as collectors and readers, help make this blog happen, with submissions and email notes.
An unusually Toasty Nataf, yellow in tone, photo by author.
Even-tempered as I am, finding this gave me a chill. The text in the middle of this Nataf stud ad variation is very close to my posts' titles. I never saw it before this week; it did not inspire the original Nataf blog post title. I found this in the WMHC Hagen-Renaker Research Materials file just the other day, while pulling xeroxed sales lists for recent post subjects.
On the same photocopy page from the WMHC file, is this Nataf ad that I had not seen before:
Collector Sally Clow mailed me this fascinating part of a document, the original government sale of the entire herd at Pomona. Here's a little backstory on why the U.S. government even owned Arabians, in the first place. Picking up where that story ends, it doesn't give a firm date of the sale. This document shows the government sale list revision is 9/47, however another source cites the sale as in Fall of 1948. This makes more sense, going by Nataf's 1948 birth year.
Courtesy Sally Clow.
If you read closely, the lot for Nataf describes him as having markings! At the time, he was still a gray young'un, with a star, pink snip, pink spot on lower lip, a right fore white sock with a white (shell or pink) hoof, and half-stockings on both hinds. These recorded markings are significant because none of the HR Nataf models had so much as a striped hoof! This may be because pale or striped hooves would have been blacked for show, and a white horse would no longer show white markings. A pink snip and lip spot would have been extra labor the San Marcos pottery just didn't elect to reproduce. The muzzle and hoof markings may not have even been made known to the factory. Another portrait model, Swaps, was produced with such extra pink markings, but Swaps was produced at Monrovia and San Dimas, under different direction. Everyone does things differently.
And here is Nataf in the Spring 1985 Hagen-Renaker sales sheet, for contrast.
This was a retail pricelist from former HR dealer, Chris Cook.
Keeping this update short and sweet, let's close with an old show photo of a OF matte Nataf with outstanding shading.
Photo courtesy C. Greene.
References
Arabian Horse Association http://www.arabianhorses.org/
Benuish, Alison, ed. Hagen-Renaker Research Materials: 1949- Present. N. pag. Salisbury, MD: WMHC, 1995.
Clow, Sally. Pers. comm. 2/11-3/15/2012.
Greene, Cheryl. Pers. comm. 4/6/2012.
Hammer, Randy. "Kellogg: A Man Who Loved His Country." University Library. Cal Poly Pomona. Special Collections Home. Collections. University Archive. 3/3/1982: 5/5/2012.
http://www.csupomona.edu/~library/specialcollections/history/kelloggcountry.html
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