Fearless in Handling Ceramics

As a person who handles a lot of ceramics- in collecting, producing, and restoring them- I get asked how I got so comfortable with them. 

"Where did you get nerves of steel? And, can we borrow some?"

Practice, and developing a light yet secure grip, is key to reaching a certain comfort level. The other thing is, I know no experience I will face with ceramics, not even shipping them blind across the country or the oceans, will ever be as harrowing as the one that shaped me.

It was the summer of 1996, and I was about to experience my very first trip to BreyerFest in Lexington, KY. I had only been to one model horse event outside my home state of California, prior to this mega-convention. I had never flown with models before, and on top of that, I am not a big fan of air travel. Let's just say, it was a big commitment of finances, courage, and a general gamble. I was living at Pour Horse Pottery, at the time. Joan Berkwitz and I were convinced that we needed to vend at this ultimate model horse convention to properly promote the then-fledgling pottery.

While Joan produced a bunch of Bressay ceramic ponies to sell at the 'Fest to cover her expenses, I made some claybody customs to sell to cover my share of the hotel and my flight. When I did OFs and customs, I paid Joan to do the moldmaking, pouring, and airbrushing, and I did the rest. 

This was the 1990's. The only other claybody customs (ceramics resculpted in greenware) known at that time were the cold-painted (unglazed) works of Janice Brent Starr. There was no Custom Glaze division in shows. Glazed claybodies were so rare and new, people often asked, "What am I looking at? Will it last?" because the idea of changing a ceramic was not yet commonplace. Longevity was a question because customized Breyers, with their cracking putty and fillers, were the only analogs. With big dreams of funding my entire trip and keeping my dog in prescription food, I claybodied a Voltage into a trot, and an Owynn into a cantering pose. 

A claybody custom from a Voltage, named "Lyre".

Resculpt by author, airbrushed by Joan, detailed/glazed by author.

Photo by Joan Berkwitz.

What a normal OF Voltage looks like.

Photo by Joan.

A claybody custom from a Pour Horse Pottery Owynn, titled, "Coch Pistol".

Photo by Joan.

An OF gray Pour Horse Owynn.

Photo by author.

I was also filling Voltage orders at the time, as the 90-day ordering period had closed, and the claybodies were worked on in stolen moments. They were risky poses, had delicate facial details, and were generally the ultimate I had done in art, up to that time. They were each going to be sold for nearly 8 times what a Voltage earned me, after the dealers' cut. Hopes. Dreams. Ambitions. Eggs. One basket. 

Literally, one basket. I didn't own luggage (I had a backpack), but Joan loaned me the use of her small vintage ladies' cosmetic hard-side case. It was the right size to fit under a plane seat, and I fully intended to carry-on these horses. Frankly, if I could have had them installed surgically for the flight, I might have considered it. That is the only way I can summarize how seriously I needed these horses to survive their voyage to BreyerFest.

Note: this is long before 9/11. There was no aggressive TSA. In fact, flying was super mellow and easy, compared to today's security routine. You could go to the gates with your family to see them off or meet them. You could buy a ticket with cash at the counter. These were carefree times.

So, here we are, arriving at San Diego airport to fly to Lexington. It's July, and we even went out and got new summer clothes for the trip because we heard that Kentucky was really hot and muggy (men's shorts, no super-short shorts that are routinely marketed to young ladies). We resembled laid-back skaters or surfers with our loose T-shirts and long shorts, long hair, and very light luggage. I was one step up from carrying my clothes in a paper grocery sack. We weren't high-maintenance. I didn't even own any makeup.

Looking back on it, through the eyes of the airport staff, we didn't look like typical lady travelers heading anywhere overnight, let alone ladies heading across the country for nearly a week. We probably looked very, very odd. 

We dutifully placed our carry-on luggage on the X-ray conveyor belt, and quickly went to the other end to collect them. I was more than a little wide-eyed, no doubt, since so much money was riding on that bumpy conveyor and about to bang at the end of the metal slide. The X-ray tech stopped the conveyor, and I can't even remember how many airport staff entered the scene at this point. It may have just been the one tech, it may have been five people surrounding us. All I remember is the next few minutes were the most horrifying ceramics-related moments of my life.

We were told to immediately open the hard-side carry-on. I told them it had fragile ceramic horses, is there some place I can lay them down while I unwrap them? They were mummified with toilet paper, as there was no room for our stiff 1996 custom foam inserts in luggage. 

No, do it right here, completely unwrap the items. 

And, did you say, "ceramic horses"? 

We'll need to break them open.


*** Reader, I will give you a moment.***


To my credit, I did not have a nervous breakdown right there in the airport X-ray line. I felt like every bit of me was shaking with a spicy blend of financial-ruin-horror and anger. I had never had a brush with the law. I was always a good kid, always followed rules, worked at a stable, Honors classes, and perpetual A+ in Citizenship. The worst thing I did in high school: I painted the musical Phantom of the Opera poster on a friend's mortarboard, and a zebra on my own, to innocently celebrate graduation. No one had ever said we couldn't decorate them, and since we paid for them, we mistakenly thought they were our own to do with as we pleased. My high school saw this as threatening self-expression and a gateway to gang insignia. Yeah. Andrew Lloyd Webber always be gangbangin'. I was threatened with my diploma being withheld because of Art. (This, sadly, is not a joke.) I was never an actual troublemaker.

So, this whole scene was completely foreign to me. I was being singled out by authority for my perfectly innocuous, hand-made horses, and being told I will not be able to pay for the very trip I'm embarking on because the X-ray tech wants to break open my claybody customs.

Joan and I were completely shocked and, of course, asking why, and who do they think they are?

Another security dude comes over. They just asked us: "Are they hollow?" 
Our answer of "yes" was apparently the wrong answer.

After the concerned security people had roughly turned my horses over and over in their hands, and mumbled among themselves, they finally gave us part of their reason.

Recently, passengers had come through this airport with ceramic horses in their luggage. These hollow ceramic horses had been stuffed with drugs. The X-ray techs now have to break open any and all horses that they see on the screen, and check them for drugs.

Joan pointed out the tiny 1/16" stilt holes in their bellies, asking incredulously, "How could anyone put drugs in those holes?"

How we must have looked to the security staff: shady, shorts-wearing skaters, with way too little luggage to look like legit out-of-state travelers. Backpack. No makeup. An adult woman and a 15-year-old, whose driver's license "says" she's twenty. And the kid looks like she's about to lose her mind, watching every movement of the horses with crazy eyes, and quivering. She's wearing a very weird hat, looks like a drug thing. And they both are questioning the routine destruction of some cheap, crappy knickknacks! Suspicious.

The weird hat. Photo by Joan, from the same time as this adventure.

The author packing the first batch of Voltages on Joan's front lawn.

I have since had three-hour layovers in other airports, layovers that become frantic gate changes across the entire airport complex. I've had indirect cross-country flight schedules where I was awake for 24 hours straight. None of those experiences took as long as those minutes at the luggage X-ray. 

At last, the security staff decided that, indeed, there was no place on the horses' bellies to fit a plug for drug installation. The stilt holes were truly too small to stuff baggies of anything, and they certainly weren't plugged, nor dusting out coke like over-sized salt shakers. When we explained again that they weren't cheap tourist ceramics, that we made them by hand, and then quoted their value, the staff looked at each other. They handed them back, not without suspicious glances, and we were stuck TP-mummifying irreplaceable ceramics in a busy airport, with no soft or uncrowded place to wrap them. Strangers. Elbows. Jostling.

Every collector knows how horrid it feels to rush to pack a china, let alone under emotional duress, and with a now-impending flight departure. That was bad.

Despite the mad re-packing, these custom ceramics survived the security inspection and the flight, and were sold at BreyerFest. They remain in collector hands, to this day. 

The art of claybody customizing has changed so vividly in the past 18 years, it may seem odd that so much stress and value was rolled up in these two early pieces. But, at the time, for the time, a claybody custom was cutting edge and almost impossible to attain. All the claybody customs Joan & I had made by that time could be counted on one hand. They showed in Artist Resins divisions, if you ever even saw one. I can't even think of a good analogy for something like that phenomenon, today. 

This ceramic airport experience is why I am so mellow about layering my ceramics in plastic bins to go to shows. It's why I seem pretty unconcerned about the whole process of exhibiting, selling, and shipping. Nothing can be worse than having persons in authority tell you they are going to bust open the bodies of your artwork right in front of you, because they suspect you of a federal crime. If the post office breaks your horse, at least you don't have to witness it and simultaneously be excruciatingly aware of some ludicrous excuse for the destruction. This will never happen at a model horse show. 

Too bad the molds weren't long-ears. Drug mules. 

Muddy Monday: Intent of Purpose

This is another Collectibility opinion piece, based on my own experience as both a producer and collector of ceramic figures.

Something that is hard to grasp about pieces that fall into the "gray areas" of provenance or collectibility is Intent of Purpose. In my opinion, this should be considered before one runs with an assumption about whether or not an unmarked piece is a legitimate test, and competes it as such. It doesn't matter if you want the piece to be a test or not. What matters is, what did the factory that produced it consider it to be? What did the factory intend to learn or achieve with this item?

How the producer's intended purpose for an individual ceramic item affects what we call it today, where it shows, and its value when it is resold.


Glaze Tests

Today's model horse potteries are careful to mark all their tests clearly, in pigment beneath the glaze, on the hoof soles, or with fired-on glaze decals. These potteries are run by people with at least a working knowledge of the model horse hobby and show definitions. They know how important it is to mark such rare items clearly, even if they do not foresee these items leaving their archives or reaching collector hands in their lifetime.

Pour Horse Pottery "Suspiro"

Left: a marked test, with my name because I was the one who wanted to know

 if a "contrasty" bay could be achieved in our glazes!

On the right, a marked glaze custom with the name "Pour Horse", 

because it was intended to be the company's donation to a benefit auction.

This came out a second, so it was replaced with a perfect and identical custom donation.

Normally, customs from this factory bear the decorator's name, 

and occasionally a "©PHP" because they own the sculpture design.

In recent years, Hagen-Renaker has taken to marking tests clearly. This helps build collector excitement for them, and ensures correct recognition of special items, for generations to come. There are still occasional unmarked tests, perhaps doing double-duty as Dealer Samples?

On the left is a normal reissue Sespe Violette in dapple gray.

On the right is a test mulberry (aka "white") with iridescent dark teal ribbons.

Did any other reissues come with this ribbon color?

She lacks a number and has no test mark, but has excellent provenance.

A year later, that excellent provenance was backed up by found paper documentation.

Vintage factory tests, be they HR or any other pottery, may or may not be marked. I have seen a vintage HR glaze test marked only with the serial number of the underglaze or slip tint color used on it. Most of the HR vintage tests I have seen have no marking. I know of three (maybe four) vintage tests with factory stickers.



Decorator or Greenware Assembly Samples

Some smaller studio potteries may re-purpose a test as the decorator's work station guide. Pour Horse Pottery and my own pottery did this. The test would be used as the guide, unless new techniques changed the edition (it's another way variants happen).



Dealer Samples

Some Miniatures pieces were glazed onto HR Lilypads and sent as Samples for Dealers. The hard base would be more durable than a standard HR paper card, and could be easier for transporting to shops and giftware shows. An article in a collector newsletter (I will post reference, when I locate it again) said a dealer glued samples to smoothed (vein-less) brown Lilypads for his/her own use. These were later recalled by the factory, according to that report. Here is one that is very certainly glazed to the beige veined Lilypad, not glued. I even checked for glue edges with a blade. It was most likely done by the factory, with the intent of being a Dealer's Sample. In fact, that is this piece's provenance, at time of sale from a collector.

Dealer's Sample HR Miniatures Donkey Baby mold # A-021

Sculpted by Helen Farnlund.

Lilypad is not smooth.

Not all Dealer's Samples are as obviously different or marked. This was purchased direct from the dealer, and at slightly higher price than her regular pieces, because it was her only sample. It bears no marking.

Again, the producer's intent is what matters: neither of these samples were intended for retail.



Prototypes for molding 

In the case of modern potteries, these may be made of green or brown plastilina (oil-based clay), Plasti-Carve wax, brown foundry wax, Castilene, or resin. 

PlastiCarve HR guinea pig.

Mold Tests and Security Bisques

The HR mold security bisques are sometimes confused with the mold-numbered sample bisques that were submitted to Breyer in 1974.

The way mold test bisques were described to me is that these are the first castings poured in the first production mold. They are white bisque, even if the final product is produced in a tinted slip. These castings tell the moldmaker if he or she has made a production-line-friendly mold, and where any pulls or errors may be located. The mold security or "insurance" bisques serve another purpose: if something happens to the master block-and-case that generates the production molds, the bisque can then be pulled from the archives and remolded. This has occurred at least a couple times in HR history. Think of these bisques as safety nets for each design. Depending on the factory, at least one, and up to several copies of the same design, may be archived.

Pour Horse Pottery "Suspiro" mold security bisque, out of the waste mold.

The rusty marks are where brown plastilina residue remained in the waste mold, 

and adhered to him when he was poured.

Custom Glazes Outside the Factory and Employee/Factory Customs

This is a very important type of model to distinguish from tests. These, in my opinion, should not show as, nor be sold as, tests. There are whole divisions at model horse shows that welcome custom glazes; they have a place. Happily, current potteries mark their customs clearly, to avoid accidental misidentification. A collector who has paid for a test on the secondary market, only to find out from the factory that it is a custom instead, is not a happy collector. Today's potteries, with the perspective of history, mark pieces clearly to avoid this.

This is an example of a vintage non-factory Custom Glaze on a white Ferseyn. Note how the artist imitated a San Dimas eye decoration.

Dapple gray custom glaze Ferseyn by a collector (Mary Ann Black).

Note the glazed/pigmented initials and year, on hoof.

"Are there vintage custom glazes finished in factories, or are you just trying to scare me?" Oh, yes, I was present when a factory moldmaker, and later, Jim Renaker himself, described certain pieces as custom orders, or playful experiments, but not tests. 

HR vintage factory custom glaze

The intent is the big difference: if the factory does not intend to reproduce it, or see if it can be produced, it is not a test for production. That's pretty much the cut-and-dried reason tests ever exist: to try out a potential for the production line. Some of the custom items that leap to my mind were heavily, intricately detailed by free-hand airbrushing, a technique that would not have been efficient or affordable for a whole production run. Such decoration would have been completely unreasonable for mass production, without the use of modern masking techniques. Sometimes, a potter just wants to know if something can be done at all, for fun.

A glaze color that was originally a custom, but is repeated later on a whole edition of a mold, has a double provenance. The factory's initial intent is what is important, here; a model should be sold/competed as the identity marked by the factory. Only in very specific situations, where direct evidence can be shown that the producer went back and enlisted that exact model as a guide to produce an edition, is it appropriate to also mention that the model is a test. There is no room in today's serious collecting world for selling pieces as "I think this was not just a custom, but a test, because I saw a similar color/pattern later on X edition." If you have it in writing from the factory, if the source of the model was the factory archives (where tests reside), and/or compelling photographs, you can build a case for it being a test + custom.

Fortunately, today's market is about equally strong for glaze customs as it is for tests. Between these two, there is limited monetary incentive to ignore the maker's intent. Both are high dollar items, now. This was not the case years ago, when values flip-flopped between the two. Of course, mistaking a lesser-value production run for a pricey test or custom will quickly be caught by sharp eyes, so there is no point or reward in falsifying collectibility designation. 

"This one has a little bit [bigger/fewer/more] spots, it must be a test!" No. The HR books and this blog have shown many examples of how wide variations can range.

"This one has initials carved in the hooves, it must be a test!" No. Many vintage models have employee initials. There will be a whole post about these, in the future.

Devil's advocate: "What if it is vintage piece that is totally weird?" Generally speaking, there is some kind of paper trail, eBay auction forum thread, or collector familiarity with the exact unusual piece in question, because this is a small world. Some pieces can be easily traced back to a specific factory employee. Some are dealer estate sale finds. Some can be traced back to an infamous counterfeiter. An eye for production and materials, and interpreting factory artifacts on the piece, will help you determine a lot before you reach the documentation-hunting phase.


Fakes

They are out there. Searches on the breakables yahoogroup will yield some discussions of fake tests on vintage bodies. There is a report of reglazed or retouched eyes of (at the time) less valuable San Dimas mini horses to pass them off as (at the time) more valuable Monrovia. Suffice to say, HR never used a sponge to apply overglazes/glass paint/ underglaze on top of an otherwise normal, completed, airbrushed, glazed horse. Knowledge of factory techniques for each product line can help guard against making an expensive identification mistake. If you have a suspected fake, feel free to contact me privately. I may be able to direct you to those who can identify it, or I can help interpret it from photos.