Following a New Set of Fresh Prints

Sometimes, I get to work with clients who are not in a tremendous rush. I love this! This means the sculpture can develop a bit more naturally, it can "simmer", and I have opportunity to grow, revisit it, and improve it before it goes to molding. The best improvements are made with fresh eyes, and that means literally putting a piece in a box where I can't see it every day. Thank you, Mustang client, for everything!

This about my new stock horse sculpture, first introduced last year in this blog entry.

The next gratitude must be expressed to the brave folks that examined him in person back then, and gave me constructive criticism. Some additional notes came via email and phone, from people who sincerely love model horses; it is so nice to have such support and encouragement in the pursuit of excellence. To those who were entirely thrilled with the first stage of him, and loved him as he was: I hope you can see what I see now.

A comparative analysis, showing side-by-side images of old and new, is a pretty soul-bearing experience for an artist. Some people never talk about this aspect of the process, maybe because they don't want to admit error. That omission may lead others to think it never happens to the professionals. Here is what a growth spurt in sculpture looks like, and trust me, there are growth pains.



And after the dust settles:



Wait! What just happened there? First, he had major body surgery, including being cut in half and having length added to his torso. Because he was sculpey and epoxy, his torso pretty much broke up under the saw, and had to be stabilized. Next, his withers were defined, his loins bunched further back to remove the "roachback", and all of his major muscle quarters were re-assessed. I found that the muscle groups along the curve from his point of buttock to Achilles tendon, were short, narrow, or just didn't tie right for a stock breed. Every single one, both sides! Here is the old construction, with my drawn-on guides for where the new muscle edges should lay:



Here is the finished area:



A little further down the hind legs, I could not stand his stance. He wasn't showing enough flexion to be engaging and crouching. One could imagine a horizontal line through the hocks, and the two sides were doing two different things. I broke his pasterns and fetlocks, then bent and cut the armature wire underneath, when the pieces fell off! Brrrrutal!



Then, I realized that to see what I was doing with the bones and tendons, I needed to shave his feathers and coronets. Nothing was lining up until the hair was removed, and then, of course, all the tendons had to be resculpted from scratch.



Finally, he looked like he was sound, athletic, and moving:



By this time, I was on a hair-removing mission. The tail was too bulky for reality, and was blocking my view of the hindquarter symmetry, so it came off, straight away. POP! As mentioned before, there are two versions of this sculpture to be produced. The Appaloosa "rat-tail" version of this sculpture could be addressed while I let the Mustang version's new hair simmer in my head. I looked at references of this old school type of stock horse, and studied how their thin, short manes and tails could be shaped to both be aesthetically pleasing, and still pull from a ceramic mold. Van Gogh's sunflowers were picked.


Now being a short, unruly old school Appy mane, there was still hair on both sides. This helped with visual interest, too:



The tail of the Appy presented a technical problem. The horse is to be slipcast via a pourhole through the butt, and the big Mustang tail would naturally serve as the pourhole plug. However, for the follically-challenged Appy, I had to make a plug shaped like the undersides of a tail, because there wouldn't be enough hair to cover.



Perhaps you are wondering now, "Why go to all this trouble to preserve the integrity of a butthole?" The answer is, one of the major defining traits of an Appaloosa is the mottled skin of its nether regions. Therefore, Breed and Workmanship judges, as well as the collectors, will examine this part of the anatomy for accuracy.

The front end was not without its share of corrections. His bony elbow points were awash in a mush, and needed to be defined. Once they came to light, I could better get a measure on his front bone lengths, and correct one longer leg. As with the hinds, the fronts got shaved and completely new tendon structures, as well as improved knees (wrists).



All four legs got an update in another aspect that I have been struggling to understand for years. I managed to get close in my Sia sculpture, but it has eluded me in full comprehension until now. I always hated my pastern-fetlock-canon transitions. They were always blocky, and dipping in the wrong spots. I reached this by dremelling his limbs down to the bone, using the anatomy book directly, then building up tissue and tendons. Finally, this horse has pushed me past a major plateau or roadblock.

Hogging on these things, hoping a magical formula will manifest:



And it didn't.




Next try, almost there...



Achieved!



He has real bones! Uh-oh. Better add bone to that shoulder point, too. Oh, no. Another roadblock to bust through... the chest. The really gut-wrenching thing is that I thought I had finally gotten this part right. Chests have been another problem area where my brain bucked and refused to comply.



And, then, the light shone down, and improvement was made on a perceived success.



It's time to talk about his most obvious change, his head. While Mustangs can be wicked ugly, and can look like his old head did, it doesn't mean all Appies look like that. Since the structure of an App or other stock breed head can occur in Mustangs, I went the other direction. I foucsed on the client's request for old-timey, rat-tail and started looking at mid-century stock breed heads. I went heavy on the jowl, gave him small, foxy ears, and an overall wedge in shape. At the same time, I had to line up all with the features of the old head, because of the old head's scale to the rest of the body. So, I decapitated him and started a whole, new head.



And just when I thought I had it- at last!- I realized that his nasal bone was crooked and drifting into a spiral. And his cheekbones didn't match, and...



Finally, getting somewhere, but don't be surprised if it gets more changes:



Now, the turn-arounds:











Now, all that remains are some fiddly changes, like lip stuff and all the veining.

It's worth noting that all of these changes were done alone, in my studio. I didn't have critics sitting at my side, pointing... the critiques themselves were short, with maybe two words to each flaw, to sort of point me in a general direction. I had no specific measures to go by, with the exception of a saddle measurement for a real horse. This was largely about battling my own perceptions and rote bad sculpting habits. This highly recommended artist's blog entry pretty much covers the torment of changing my brain. It is so much more than just having the guts to chop, saw, dremel, and vaporize your former best. You have to sit down, make a game plan, and have an absolutely clear vision of what the end result must look like, regardless of steel armature or personal preferences. It hurts, like someone is stamping fresh hoofprints in your head. In a way, you are.

Without A Leg to Stand On

This entry is little better off than that; for all of the data presented, most of the conclusions remain speculation. The theories rest on collectors’ and ceramists’ interpretations of the unique item, and just a couple pieces of documentation. This is another case in which answers only led to more questions. Like my previous articles on The Mystery Horses of Maureen Love, this single mystery horse investigation yielded more than expected.

This story begins with a minuscule and innocuous chip of pottery, belying its significance in Hagen-Renaker history. This HR horse was missing all four legs, only 1.25" high from ears to the longest foreleg nub. He was the only one of his kind in the archives. When Joanie Berkwitz and Kathleen Rose were working in the archives, photographing for 1989’s The Hagen-Renaker Handbook, and cleaning up the shelves, Maxine Renaker gave Joanie this piece to restore. She later told her to keep it. Ultimately, this twist of fate saved him from the HR dustbin.[i] Years later, when her collecting interests shifted, Joanie rehomed him with me. I mistakenly called him the Mini Mini “drafter”, even though he is not one. He just seemed so round and jolly, like a bobtail fellow you’d see pulling a sleigh. The only things I knew about him were his origin and that he was known as a test.





It has been suggested by another collector that he may not be a test, but maybe a factory goof, an employee custom, or a custom by Maureen. I call him a test in this article, as that is what he was termed in the archives and by the original owner. I will try to detail each opinion and show the documentation about this horse so you, the reader, may form your own conclusions.

Those new to collecting HR may be wondering, “What is a Mini Mini?” That’s the old call name of the smallest horse molds in the HR Miniatures line (although, not their oldest names). The Mini Mini horses are currently represented by a family of molds, the “Small Stallion”, “Small Mare”, and “Small Colt”. This article will refer to them as the “Mini Mini family”. They have been good sellers for HR over the decades, and have been produced in matte and glossy, and several different colors. You may view the current finish here, just scroll down.

How exactly does this odd bobtail test relate to the family horses and foal? One theory is that this test’s mold is a reworked version of either the current Mini Mini “Small Colt” or the “Small Stallion”.

Collector Nancy Falzone shares her opinion that this dapple gray horse is “… a test or a factory employee piece and is a version of the A 451 stallion (the stock numbers on the 1958 list say differently but it is A 451) as his size is right.”

Unlike the colt, this fellow's head is turned slightly, and his tail is set lower and does not point upwards. It is a bobtail. His legs are almost in the right place, but the test bobtail is adult Mini Mini size. He would be 1.5” tall, if he had his legs under him. This is, as Nancy mentions, the same height as the Mini Mini family stallion. Unlike the stallion, his head is turned, his opposite legs are together, and his pourhole is on the opposite side. In this scale, that’s a lot of troubling with tiny, fragile wax legs, when starting from scratch would be easier (from my perspective as a sculptor). A resculpt would have been done on a wax casting of whichever horse came first, if that happened.

The sculpture style of the bobtail is so distinctive, even his proportions are different from the more realistic family Mini Mini’s. His muzzle and limbs taper sharply. His body segments are round and ball-like, not as much horse-shaped. This supports the opposing theory that he was from a completely original sculpture- waste molded, tested, but never put into production. There is strong agreement among collectors that Maureen Love designed this horse. The style of the horse is much closer to her “Modern Horse”, “Retro” (aka, the Black Bisque Horse mold), and wall plaque designs for HR, than it is to her realistic Mini Mini family.

Then, there is his color. He is the only known dapple gray on a Mini Mini horse. HR has produced larger Miniatures in dapple gray, some with splattered darker spots over white body, others with sanded or rubbed-off lighter dapples. The decoration technique to achieve his color is subject to more than one opinion, as is almost everything about this horse. Written long before Joanie became a ceramist herself, her Glass Menagerie article on this piece suggested that he was decorated by splattered or flicked white dots on top of his gray tinted-slip body. She says today:

“… My early description of the glazing on the horse is off (he's not grey slip)… To me, his dapples look floaty and too white, and slightly translucent... much more in line with being applied. They may have been applied by dotting with a brush instead of splattering, but I doubt that they were wax resist. I would expect a much stronger dark area around each one if that were the case. Also some color inside of the dot. And the dot would not look milky, it would look very white.”

I agree that he is not cast in gray slip, because after reading the GM article, I checked that with the moistening method, as described earlier in my blog. The exposed slip on his leg breaks is white. Some of his nubs had glue residue, but the clean bisque surface did not turn gray when moistened. This means he was poured in white slip; his gray color was only a thin, sprayed underglaze coating over his white body. Further evidence of sprayed gray can be seen in the directional shading on his eyes, wrinkles, etc.

I have a different idea about how those round dapples could have been made. There are darker rings around some of his white dapples. This happens when sprayed underglaze pools around a latex or wax-resisted dot. The resist method on a white slip body will yield white dapples after a bisque firing and some light rubbing. The dots were applied individually with a tool, not splattered, because the dapples are rather uniform and no long, thin splats are present. This means resist (or white underglaze paint) was applied perpendicular to each contour. His opposite side also has many incompletely white dapples, yet their hard outlines are visible. This can occur when the resist is applied too thin, isn’t rubbed from the bisque before final glazing, or otherwise does not complete its job. I have personally experienced this on occasion. The suspended pigment just settled right down after the resist burned out in the kiln, and it adhered to the horse. It may even be a combination of techniques, using white underglaze to try and cover the adhered, failed dapples? This color is not seen on later horses of any HR mold. The risks and labor are too high for such a small product, and one of modest profit margin. The "points" of the horse, including the mane, bobtail, and muzzle, are sprayed with black underglaze. He has a clear gloss glaze on top of it all, and this has crackled with age.

When I began investigating this horse for my blog, I started by looking for a missing mold number in the HR collector books. I found a gap in the Miniatures line mold number sequence, and that number happened to be 450, just before the well-known Mini Mini family’s numbers 451, 452, and 453. This blank spot earlier in the sequence confused me because it conflicted with the information I had at that time. I was recently told that there is a 1960’s HR sales list, after the initial Mini Mini family release, showing a line drawing of him, and about the aforementioned Glass Menagerie newsletter, written by Joanie.[ii] I was a mere fledgling collector during the publishing era of GM, not a subscriber, and had never seen this article. She recommended that I ask collector Nancy Falzone for more information. Nancy not only found the GM article, but also dug up the original Mold Book page scan and the original first appearance of this horse as a line drawing on a Fall 1958 sales list.


Sales list scan courtesy Nancy Falzone.

No two collectors I’ve been in touch with have the same take on this. Here's my interpretation of the documents, which is not the only possible one.

The test is named, “Horse #2”, as illustrated on the sales sheet. It’s his mold, right down to his turned head and funny tail. But who are those other horses around him? They are clearly not members of the known examples of the Mini Mini family of Fall 1958 and most of the seasons between Fall 1964 and the present.

One thing collectors agree on is that the other two in that 1958 sales sheet segment don’t exist in the pantheon of HR models. They also have bobtails. Their poses are quite different. I was saddened that I'd never seen them, as I love their style. Collectors are missing out on something neat here.

It is most likely that one of each bobtail existed, at least in the original sculpture stage, in order for the sales sheet drawings to be made at all. This point is made in the GM article. Since this dapple gray casting of Horse #2 exists, at the very least, a waste mold was made from his original sculpture. Why were they not put into further production? I don’t know. When an order was placed for any of these three bobtail drawings on the lists, the factory shipped out the Mini Mini family members instead. The Mold Book evidence also backs this up. It is known among collectors that not all sales list drawings accurately represented the product that shipped. As of this writing, no collectors have reported finding any of these bobtails, beyond this single #2 test. If bobtails ever shipped out, at least one more should have turned up after all these years, in this era of eBay.

The images below are artist conceptions of what the bobtails could have looked like, translated to 3D from the line drawings, and based on the known #2 test. The glaze finish is a loose recreation of the known #2 test, as a rushed factory employee might do. It is unlikely that this color was used beyond the one test, as it is too time-consuming for production. When you are out hunting, keep your eyes peeled for these in the matte Monrovia brown, like the first season of the Mini Mini family[iii], not dapple gray. To reiterate, these images are not of existing HRs, just imagined “what-ifs” to inspire collectors and help identify any that may be “out in the wide world”. If you own an authentic HR Mini Mini that looks like these, please share your photos, so we can all learn more.



Observations on Style and Production

The line drawing of Horse #1 has a Spanish profile, in a three-points-of-balance approximation of a collected trot. His tail bob is somewhat elongated, compared to the other two. The image below tried to replicate the exact angles of the drawing; it was not “prettied up”.





Horse #2 is shown as a reconstruction with lower limbs, so he might finally stand proud, alongside his siblings. He does not have a gender in his sculpture, I just got into the habit of referring to it as a "he". Since there are no known examples with the legs attached, the dark hoof decoration is an extrapolation based on the decoration “points” of the known Mini Mini family, in their many production colors.

Horse #3 represented a challenge to translate into a three-dimensional piece that would look like it pulled from a two-piece mold. The known #2 test pulled from a two-piece mold, as evidenced by his mold lines, and such tiny pieces of pottery would require the minimum of mold pieces. The more pieces to each mold, the wider the seams can get, and there is no room for widening on such a small scale! The illustration shows that #3 has a longer torso than the other two drawings. It also has a long hip, and is overall smaller and svelte, possibly indicating a mare. The neck is sharply turned back on itself, with the muzzle on the shoulder, as if scratching an itch. This sort of natural animal gesture is one of my favorite things about Maureen’s work.





All three designs were adult horses, and had carved and/or contoured style lines breaking up their body segments. All had their ears back, unlike the family. In the adult trio, the manes had far more detail than the tails, with test #2’s tail only sporting two or three lines on each side. Completely unlike the family, all three bobtails have concave eyes, or sockets. Pigment pools in them to make them look darker than the rest of the face. It reads well on such tiny horses. It would certainly reduce or eliminate painting mistakes, as they need no decorator’s touch beyond the overspray of the body shading.

If these are the three horses in the Fall 1958 sales sheet with the 451, 452, 453 designation, when do the accurate line drawings of the actual produced family first appear? I don’t have that answer. The MG article indicates that these same bobtail drawings were absent in Spring 1959, the season following debut. The same stylized adult horse drawings appear on the Fall 1964 sales list, but this time with the names “Stallion”, “Mare”, and “Foal”. Nancy relates:

“The same sketches as 1958 follow clear through the Monrovia Spring 1966 time fame & into San Dimas, but I doubt very much that they were actually [shipping] bob tail models. I am almost positive in fact they were never bob tailed & those Spring 1964 mini minis were what you see now. HR did that all the time with their sketches with wrong ones pictured or just carried the same sketch even though [the] model changed.”



Mold Book scan courtesy Nancy Falzone.

The handwriting on 452 looks like it could have ink run through from a previous page, so the best guess I have:

"452 D-1 Horse [Head down] go w/ s. c. B-1"

It's clear that the Mold Book entry for 452 is not talking about bobtail #2 (sales list mold number 452), because his head is not down. It is impossible to confuse him with the prancing, head-down mare of the known family. The Mold Book describes the Mini Mini family as being introduced 7 (July) of '58. It looks like the bobtails got their sales list portraits, but the family beat them to the Mold Book.

With the other two bobtail horses in limbo, I don't think we can fairly say this #2 test is mold number 450. Here is another point on which everyone agrees- it would be pure speculation to ascribe it. They must have all been sculpted, we just don't know which, if any of them, might have been "Reserved" that mold number slot. One could assume this single example of Horse #2 was intended to be 450 because he was the only bobtail example known from the archives, until something else shows up. I personally feel that the three bobtails did not "survive" even a market research phase (such as gift show orders) long enough to be recorded in the official Mold Book. They were bumped off by the three Mini Mini family molds, born right on their heels, and given their sales list mold numbers.

Was a block and case, let alone production molds, ever made on any of the three bobtail models? If only one of the three designs made it to a block and case, and no data here promises that, and it was proven to be Horse #2, only then could I agree with the designation of 450. That's the sort of question only someone at HR could answer by digging through mold inventory and opening the one marked 450, if it exists. Again, I really don't think the three bobtails made it past the waste mold stage. Glazing a test color on a waste mold test casting is common enough. It’s quick and economical for the production potter. That would explain how my one came to be.

I would feel comfortable calling the bobtail trio, "the alternate Mini Mini horse group". My opinion is that my lonely #2 was a test to determine some aspect of intended production, either the decoration or the casting or both. After all, he was one of the very first three horses made in this size, so his molding and casting would have been a bit of a learning curve with such dainty legs! Until other genuine examples of this trio are found, I suspect that he is a waste mold casting of a design that never made it into the Mold Book. It is easy and tempting to plop him into that blank #450 slot, but I really try to see what is there, not get carried away with tidying up a loose end. I must keep my own legs under me.



Gratitude to the collectors who made this journey possible!

*The HR Mold Book is the factory’s log of all molds produced. It is not to be confused with the manuals, guides, handbooks, and assorted texts published about HR.


Berkwitz, Joan. “Unsolved Mystery”. The Glass Menagerie June 1991: three unnumbered pages.
Falzone, Nancy. Personal communications. January 2011.
Hagen-Renaker, Inc. Unpublished Mold Book.
Hagen-Renaker, Inc. Sales sheet. Fall 1958.
Roller, Gayle. Hagen-Renaker: A Charlton Standard Guide. Third Edition. The Charlton Press: Palm Harbor, FL, 2003.

Footnotes:

[i] Berkwitz, Joan. Personal communication. February 10, 2011.


[ii] Berkwitz, Joan. Personal communication. January 4, 2011.


[iii] Roller, Gayle. Hagen-Renaker: A Charlton Standard Guide. Third Edition. The Charlton Press: Palm Harbor, FL, 2003.

Update on the Mystery Horses

Since the initial Mystery Horses post, I've continued to dig up the information. Here are corrections and tasty new trivia to compliment the previous post. Fun stuff happens when you do your own legwork! Photos are by me, often taken "in the wild", unless otherwise noted.

Here is a Lane Puma Planter, mold base inscribed for the copyright year of 1960. Note that the airbrushed technique, palette, and finish are similar to the supposedly "Mexican" factory finish on the Lane Running Horse.






The Puma's finish and complete base together supports the idea that these horses were authentic Lane production pieces, not Mexican knock-offs. The factory's reason for removing the horses' base undersides, and changing the decoration to "natural", is up for speculation.
Updated 1/18/12: The Natural colourway has been found on the earlier, larger first version of this horse mold,  independent of the mold edit.

Here are better photographs of the OF Lane Rearing Facing Left horse, courtesy of collector Arlene Soderlund:





An odd piece turned up on eBay, and is the subject of mild disagreement among ceramic horse collectors. This horse planter is thought to be a Lane piece; it was produced in both this color and a shaded black. The mold has such an oddly familiar look to it. Do you see it? It looks like a pottery designer (not Maureen Love) turned her Lane Rearing Facing Left (leg-out) horse horizontal, and hacked at him until he ran. Photo from eBay:


Why on Earth would this composition leap to mind? It would, if you saw your competitor, Beauceware, selling these like hotcakes for the previous decade. Note the differences in the neck, the negative space in the tail, the overall refinement, etc. The Beauceware piece dates from 1952, whereas Maureen sculpted for Lane in the 1960's.

I would not call this a Maureen Love sculpture anymore; it is "derived from", at best, and that is generous.

A reminder about values on these Mystery Horses: see the earlier post. They are only worth what other collectors are willing to pay. Chances are, if you do find one, you'll grow so fond of its quirky self that you'll hesitate to sell it.

Under the Hobby Molds heading of the previous Mystery entry, both of these styles of Facing Left Rearing "Leg Out" horse are hobby molds.
Update 1/18/12: They were both also manufactured in OF finishes! 



They were produced by two different manufacturers. The white bisque on the left is considered the more authentic of the two because it matches the Lane model.
Update 1/18/12: The white bisque one does not exactly match the first version of the Lane 239 mold. The P-159 has added fine hair detail in the mane and tail.

It was made by Provincial Molds. This horse comes out of a two-part mold, but the left hind leg is an add-on, poured in the margin. It is mold #P-159, although another online source calls it "PO159". It also had an accessory mold for a unicorn horn and Pegasus wings, #P-159A. Please note that the other items, including the horse's accessories, were not designed by Maureen Love. Vintage Provincial mold catalog image:



I am still seeking information on how and when Provincial acquired this mold copyright from Lane. It is possible that this was done without Lane's knowledge. There was a lot of "bastardization" between pottery companies. Note that Provincial's P-434 above looks an awful (pun intended) lot like the Kimple #2950 hobby mold.

This brings us to the other version hobby mold. The brown glaze is not an OF finish, it is a hobbyist-glazed one-off from the second version.
Update 1/18/12: Wrong, it is an OF finish. This mold was both OF and available to hobbyists.

In this sense, hobbyist refers to a hobby mold user, not a fancier of the model horse hobby. This mold, by an unknown manufacturer, has a much taller base, more "ferns" added to the support and base, and the left hind leg is not an add-on. As best I can tell from the mold seams, it came out of a four-piece mold, and still sacrificed the stallion's genitalia. The overall sculpture is thicker, lacking detail, and there are odd rings around the neck. This gives it an elongated and thickened look. Here is another hobbyist-glazed one-off of this second version:


And, yet another, with a hand for scale against the tall base:



As if just to show us that every answer leads to yet more questions, this mutation turned up online. It looks like the Provincial Molds' P-159 "leg-out" horse's forelegs were altered to a pose matching the Lane Facing Right Rearing horse. It also looks like something unfortunate happened to his jaw. Google coughed this up in Images without a working source page, so credit for this photo is unknown at this time.
Updated 1/18/12: This is OF mold #1156.



For those interested in the monumental-sized Large Rearing Facing Right horse, get ready to do a little happy dance. He is known as the Bil-Mar #524 Large Rearing Horse. This enormous hobby mold is still in production and available to order. This means that it is not as rare as previously estimated by its scarcity "in the wild". However, weighing in at 100lbs and birthing greenware that measures 26.5 x 20" long, this plaster ceramic hobby mold is not for the timid. Convenient to West Coast potters, Macky Molds produces and sells the Bil-Mar #524 Large Rearing Horse. Macky has acquired rights to produce many vintage hobby molds. However, all potters may acquire the same mold brand new, but from a dealer at a discount (plus shipping, no store pick-ups). Here is the adorable Bil-Mar catalog photo of him in an ambitious Appaloosa pattern. He looks so small here!



I can't wait to see what today's custom glaze artists will do with this monster! Although I doubt this is the end of my investigation of the history and identities of the Mystery horses, I do have a happy ending for now. I am acquiring some of these hobby molds to glaze, too!

If you have photographs of any of the mold variants, or a Lane catalog, I'd love to see them and share them in a future installment.

References:

Breakables Yahoogroup. Message #41375. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/breakables/message/41375
Ceramics Network http://www.ceramicsnetwork.com/Provincial2.aspx
Macky Molds http://www.mackymolds.com/myweb/Bil-Mar/Bil-Mar%20Index%20Page.htm
Indiana Ceramic Supply http://www.debmark.com/molds/BM/BM.php#start
TV Lamps.net http://www.tvlamps.net/horse_lamps.html

Preserving Ceramic History

I am typing this on a holiday, a rare night off, and it just happens to be New Year's weekend. This time of year tends to put me in a reflective mood about the history of my ceramics, and hopes of the future of the art form. Lately, I have put thought into how to preserve and protect my ceramics from year to year, to decades, and beyond.

I admit it: it has been a hair over four years since I last dusted my collection and personal pottery archives. Many, many people have seen this in the interim, and most have been kind enough to not mention the state of my shelves. It takes four years for me to find both the courage and a block of days to take them out, individually dust, and inventory them. It's not that there are a lot of pieces; most would consider the size of my collection modest. The whole thing is barely equal in number to the major collectors' show strings, let alone their collections. For a little perspective, my entire show string averages five to seven pieces, roughly one per breed division.

The actual ceramic figure dusting is accomplished with cotton gloves and a large micro-fiber towel. The gloves prevent my leaving fingerprints on glossy ceramics. One of these useful towels can dust a small collection before needing to be washed. The shelves require the tough love of glass cleaner and either newsprint or paper towels. You'll get less lint if you clean glass with newsprint, but watch for the ink on your hands- don't touch white bisque right after that!

So... it takes days? really? Yes, because rushing always results in damage. A large chunk of that time is spent dusting each piece carefully, studying it, deciding how to thematically display, and yet accommodate the attrition of sold pieces and the appearance of new finds. Placement in the cabinet for items without bases is side-to-side, with foam pads at each end of the shelf, against the side walls, to brace the entire line in place. This method comes from my days collecting in California, with earthquakes and sonic booms making things interesting. More extreme preservation, such as storing items laying down in drawers, or upright with foam pads between each item, is certainly safe but not very pretty. I look at these items daily for reference and inspiration, so I had to come up with a compromise between safety and visibility. Only items that are firmly glazed to a base get to be displayed in profile. If I do this right, I will be happy with the arrangement for the next four or more years. So far, I have been happier and happier with each iteration.

This year, I have not been happy with the actual cabinet itself. I have watched over the months as the quarter-inch-thick safety glass shelves bowed under the strain of their five-foot stretch. They bounced and jiggled when the studio doors closed; horses literally danced with vibration from the air vacuator system, located two rooms over. The cabinet is safely screwed to the wall studs, but its components were a virtual donkey ride for the artworks. Then there was the issue of the shelf L-brackets, which had already served five decades under much heavier collectibles, with a previous owner. Metal fatigue shears and earthquake tales about these things made my stomach knot. The L-brackets needed to be replaced. They also threw shadows on my pottery, and generally looked ugly. Before:



My husband came up with a plan to drill holes in the solid oak walls, set bolts tightly fitted therein, and then cover the extended ends with hexagonal sleeves. The flat surface of the sleeve where glass rested was topped with a custom-cut piece of adhesive foam padding.



The next issue to be addressed was the shelves' bowing. I had seen how 1/2" thick glass store display shelves were supported in their centers with Plexiglass vertical "X" shapes. My husband designed laying "T" shapes and custom cut these plex supports for the entire cabinet. No more bow, and now all the shelves were solid as rock.

View from top shelf, looking down:



Not only did he fit the cabinet with all these stabilizing parts, but he also installed lighting in the top. The cabinet is not only less stressful to look at, it is easier to see what is inside it!



To label each pottery item, I use paper self-adhesive labels and a paper hole punch to make tiny round dots with identifying numbers. These cannot harm the finish nor the stability of the models. Each sticky dot goes on the bottom of one foot or the base, and corresponds to an inventory list. I include as much data as I know about the provenance of each item. Horrifyingly, shockingly, I do the entire first stage of this process with good, old-fashioned pen and paper. I am aware that there are more high-tech methods (I know I could make bar code stickers, but I don't want to) but I rather like the tedious nature of this method; it gives me more time to visit with each piece. Considering the hangtags I used to make, which were bulky and obscured my view of the sculptures, this dot thing is high tech.

To back up my personal accounts of the provenance of some pieces, I also collect paper ephemera linked to these items. This includes books, articles, printouts of closed online auctions, printed emails from former owners, photographs, even material relating to the (once) living portrait animal.

The unseen, but still important, part of collection protection is insurance. I highly recommend this to all collectors, regardless of location. Collectibles insurance is more readily available now, and some home policies can add on for it. If you do not own your home, get renter's insurance. Be sure to save your invoices when you buy at collector prices. If you watch prices realized of auctions and online sales, print out those of pertinence to the same items you own. The ephemera mentioned above can figure into proving the values of your collectibles. An inventory list, stored in a safe place, plus a copy stored off-site, is absolutely necessary.

Cabinet locks help ease one's mind when lots of guests are milling around or children are loose. You may feel icky about what visitors might think you think of them, but it's really nothing personal. You don't think they are going to run out with something under their coat; you just don't need something toppled over or mishandled out of curiosity. Some collectible ceramic pieces may be so unique or valuable that no parent would pay for the damage, even if little Johnny had just galloped it down to sharp nubs. Save yourself unnecessary strife and loss (and a lecture) and put a temporary lock on when visitors are in town.

Some collectors live in areas where they require home security systems in general, not just for their collections. The good news is that home insurance (assuming you've added a policy for your collection) offers discounted rates where a system is in use.

I want to see these artworks last well into the future, so steps must be taken to help preserve them. I am starting off the New Year with fresh display themes, glistening art, and relief in my heart for the stabilized cabinet. There is even a blank shelf now, waiting to be filled with my new work. What an inspiring way to start the year!