Would You Like That "Extra Crispy"?

This is a topic that I hope will inspire some collector participation, as in, send your photos. There will be a follow-up post.

We all know that these ceramic artworks are fired in kilns to achieve their permanence and luster. What some don't know is that despite careful monitoring and loads (literally) of experience, temperatures can fluctuate inside the kiln. Sometimes, it's a matter of the arrangement of the kiln load, or how close an individual piece is to a heat source (be it gas jets or electrical elements). At other, more infuriating times, it is due to a spontaneous malfunction of a regulator, relay, or other modifying mechanism. Those are the times that try potters' souls, but not nearly as mind-melting as when you are a factory with a load of dozens or hundreds of pieces. Some of these "Toasties" can be salvaged and sold; some, well, they sort of melt where they stand.

Not all factories are horrified by the resulting glaze variants. Some, like the first studio where I served an apprenticeship, absolutely delight in variants. It gave that pottery's stoneware tiles a color family range, exactly as the original Batchelder tiles. I remember Laird being a big fan of his glazes' extremes, particularly when they got a little toasted by the jets.

Another pottery, Hagen-Renaker, kiln fires large numbers (compared to us hobby ceramists) in each load. Over the years, I have seen a few HR factory "Toasties". These appear different from the blackened miniatures resulting from accidental reduction firings (without oxygen). Toasties retain some of their intended hue, but usually only in their deepest detail. I don't want to wax overly technical here, but things are happening underneath the glaze on a chemical level, beyond the human hand's application of that pigment. Please forgive the label, "Toasty"; it's all I have to work with until I learn a more friendly term. "Over-fired" is just not a cute word.

When were these made? They have happened occasionally, over the decades, and still happen. I bought these two HR reissue Native Dancer models in June of 2009. They were in a regular, brick-and-mortar gift shop HR retailer, from the same fresh shipment.



This is the normal one.



Here you can see how the Toasty's pigment is reduced and grainy over the broad surfaces, and only the details cling to color. These areas only have blotchy rich color. It's almost the look of hand-brushed watercolors, not airbrushed underglazes! This effect is universal on Toasty glazes. The airbrushed pigments are, in fact, dissipated chemically, without the influence of the human hand. In my own ceramics experience, I've seen this happen when pieces are glaze fired repeatedly (or accidentally overcooked).



In a HR firing moment between 1981-1984, probably early on in that period, judging by her fully tri-eyes, a regular palomino large Zilla got toasted. Zilla photos courtesy of collector Karen Beeson.


She was over-heated so much that her seamlines, greenware sponge wipes, and white mineral specks rose up under her glaze (see her back).





I get that it "looks" like color was swiped on top, but it's actually the pigment settled into her clay surface texture and minerals (grog) of the clay changing the surface, as it attained a higher temperature. At HR, sponging the seams down is standard practice. This removes the outer "silt" layer of fine clay and exposes the micro texture of the clay (fine grog). Those white specks are the grog exposed after greenware sponging, usually unnoticed under normal firing conditions.



The body shading is on all SM palominos, it just is palomino color when fired correctly. Some underglazes are unstable when heated above the ^04 range. Weird things happen to over-cooked dirt.


Note that her belly, where no sprayed underglaze was applied, looks fairly normal.



Everybody wants to know if these are more valuable, since they are factory OF variants. Honestly, some people are grossed out by them. Do not expect a Toasty to win a Breed class at a model horse show. They don't look like real horse colors. There is no way of telling if they are even all that rare, and this is not a condition that is only found on one color, nor one mold. The circumstance is random and an equal opportunity underglaze obliterator. Fresh Toasties retail right alongside normal siblings, so it is not like the factory retains them, out of collector hands. They are out there.

On a more personal note, I was present for the following over-firing, back in 1996. The Manual Kiln Sitter had a bar failure, and roasted a whole batch of Joanie's early Pour Horse Pottery Owynn. Talk about scorched earth! These earthenware fellows were vitrified, and drooped upon their stilts like Vlad's victims. They couldn't be glazed, so technically they are bisque Toasties. They don't have the pigment dissipation effect only seen in glazed Toasties. Instead, the overdone Owynns show the instability of gray and black underglazes at excessive temperatures. Here is one of the lucky ones, and even he stands 1/2" shorter than a normal gray Owynn. Yes, the gray one is what he was supposed to look like, had he survived past this fatal bisque firing. If this had been a glaze firing, I don't even want to think about the collateral damage that would have done to the kiln's furniture. Meltdown.



Toasties happen, and they can't be 100% prevented. They aren't realistic nor gem-like, and their collectibility is subjective. People like them or hate them. One thing is certain: no one orders their horses "extra crispy".

Glazing: Old and New, Both Good

With my backlog nearly completed, I took one day off and ran up to the Breakables and Fairytales Live at Breyerfest for the evening. This is a North American Model Horse Shows Association qualifier competition for all ceramic (and OF resin) model horses. It is the only model horse show at Breyerfest where you will see horses aged 100 years or more competing -and winning!- against the latest issues. There are categories for horse ceramics from every corner of the earth, made from every type of earth! You couldn't tell by now that I love the vintage pieces, adore the unusual- and this show did not disappoint. I did some proxy exhibiting for clients, but I managed to get a couple of photos of pieces that struck me as interesting.

The problem all horse artist-potters face is, how do you make a piece of china look like a horse, with all the variety of markings and colors? As many potters as there were and are, there are just as many answers, and that is what makes an all-ceramic model horse show such a great treat.

Dapples and Reverse Dapples





This dapper gent (unusually, it's not a mare polo pony) was the Rosenthal factory's answer to the question of dappling and reverse dappling, back in 1911. Some modern collectors may overlook this fellow, but there is a lot going on here. His roached mane and forelock have individually painted hairs. His eye is detailed, and even his nostril has an interior gray spot. Both types of dapples are subtle without hard edges or runs. There is a great deal to be learned from this piece, even one hundred years after it was made.

Here is a very subtle and elegant answer to the dapple question, from Nymphenburg, sometime after 1915:



This is a modern piece, recently decorated by Horsing Around of the UK. Each factory has its unique flair in decoration, and it becomes readily identifiable to collectors. A little further down is a photo of this same mold, addressing the same color, as an example of the endless variety in approach.



Here are two more modern takes on the dapple concept. The pony on the left is a RW custom glazed by the late Anthony (of Alchemy and formerly, Royal Worcester) and the on the right is a dapple rose gray by myself, of about 2 years ago.



Although she was not entered at this show, this model was on my table as a sample. I custom glazed this model (same mold as the Horsing Around above) this year. I aimed for a nice blend of the old and the new, soft and yet detailed.



The Smooth Body Surface

What do you do when your model has a soft form? How do you make its few details "pop"? By selective shading, without compromising or muddying up the slip pigmentation. Here is a Hagen-Renaker Sespe Violette, with strategic directional shading on her withers wrinkles, throat wrinkles, and leg feathers. She dates around 1954-55. There are many more heavily shaded examples, several were at this show.



Here is a current release, a Callahan sculpted and glazed by Addalee Hude, which rises to the challenge with pattern detail, rather than relying on strategic shading alone.



Making a "Blah" Color Sing

Here is a lovely vintage example of what many collectors would call a "boring" color choice: a solid bay. The Royal Worcester "Mill Reef" edition translated a bay color, that could easily have been flat, into a chocolate enrobement that exalts the sculpture. True, it takes a little stylist side trip here and there, following some sharply delineated contours, but that speaks to their commitment to the original designer's concept. That's cool. Overall, the shading and application, and attention to detail (nostril interior sinus pink!), has volumes to teach modern glaze artists.




I saw many rare and beautiful models that I simply couldn't get to fast enough to photograph on the judging tables. I hope this little sampler inspires you to attend the next all-ceramic horse show near you, or at least look at the china classes at the next horse show with fresh eyes. So much thought and technical work goes into each piece, be it an edition or one-of-a-kind. The appreciation knows no bounds of time or nationality.

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.