Crown Jewel's secret

After putting up the post about Crown Jewel (below) and really thinking about him, opening my mind to the past and all of it's hidden meanings, something came to me tonight. Something important. Something so quiet that I couldn't hear it, so wispy that I couldn't see it. But now I do.

Threads. Tangled ones, looped and twined in chaos. The ends are hidden, the middle is messy, no where to start, no where to end. You see only parts of the whole. Pull here, and it tugs there, Pull there, and it tightens here. The past is like that.

Maureen, and Laurilyn, were the people who inspired me to start in ceramics. Maureen didn't talk much, she just... did. She gave you ten words, but a book full of gestures, movements, knowledge. Only if you listened with more than your ears. You had to listen with your heart, and your hands, and your head. You had to *observe* what she did. She couldn't explain it... she *was* it.

What I finally understood tonight is that she isn't finished teaching me. I had to get far enough, so that I could hear what else she had to say. I had to learn fifteen year's worth of ceramics, to catch up to the lessons that she left behind. That last lesson has been sitting in my case, quietly, like an unopened book. I didn't see the book before, couldn't read it, only looked at the cover and moved away. Now, it's time to wipe off the dust, open to the first chapter, and read that book.

I won't sell Crown Jewel, not until he teaches me what Maureen wanted me to learn. Not until I can paint like she did. Not until I have teased the messy threads, found the ends, untangled the knots, pulled them straight and made them right again. After all these years, I look at Crown Jewel and I don't know how she made him look so real. I have a few guesses, a glimpse here and there, an idea to try... but until I can duplicate his finish at will, until I can make a horse as glorious as he is, then I haven't learned all that she had to teach. That is the piece of the puzzle still missing. Maureen did what no one else could do, she did it in her own primitive kiln, without electronic controls or fancy equipment. Just her, the clay, the pigments, and the quiet dust motes dancing in the sun streaming through the window pane.

Fifteen Years, Fifteen Gifts Contest

Here they are, the hidden prizes! Entries are POURING in (pardon the pun!) Tomorrow morning, I will pull the first name, and reveal the first prize.

Yes, I am giving away fifteen things... fifteen pieces of PH history. But you gals have given me even more... you've given me a career, a passion, a life full of interesting people, and priceless memories.

My heart is very full today.



8/1/09: The first prize given is an old Saucy, and the winner is Cindy Dilks.



8/2/09: The second prize given is a black bat Christmas ornament, and the winner is Sandy Tomezik



8/3/09: The third prize is a double-test saffron Nomad, and the winner is Marge Para



8/4/09: Bobby's 21st birthday, and Jeanene Bernardin wins the first firing swirly Hadrian



8/5/09: Liz Strauss wins a useful Tig Mug!



8/06/09: Mel Hinkle wins a Suspiro Marble Head!

Crown Jewel

The past is a funny thing. It isn't linear, really. Connections between the past, the present, and the future are a tangled skein that cannot be unraveled. Who we are, what we think, what we love and hate, the songs we sing, the whole of our identity is tied up with parts of our past.

I'll never forget, standing in a funny little gift store in Encinitas, California, and talking to the lady about Maureen Love. The little gift store was selling some of Maureen's birds... I was shocked and excited. It was called "The Third Bird" and it specialized in beach themes... appropriate for a gift store in the charming, funky, hippy town that whose entire western border was wetted by the Pacific Ocean. I was probably babbling, which I do when I get nervous. She said something like, "Would you like to meet Maureen Love?" (what a silly question) and when I nodded yes, she said "There she is, right behind you". My knees went weak. Seriously, My stomach fluttered. I turned to look a an older woman, who was tanned and slim, with a slight widow's hunch. Her eyes were sharp and bright, and her manner was shy.

The rest of that day is a fog, I can't remember a thing about it. But it was a turning point for me, bringing her into my little bubble of reality. Until then, she was an artificial construct... she existed in some sort of higher plane. Meeting her made her into a living being, even grander for being shy and kind.

Over the years, as we proceeded to write the book. ("The Hagen-Renaker Handbook"), we visited Maureen many times. I could take my kids over to her house, talk to her for a while, see her chickens and her goldfish ponds. She would teach us about her native plants, show us her sculptures, and just chat. There are too many memories, this pitiful medium of a blog can't possibly hold them all. But the point today is to show you something that I still have of hers. The most valuable horse I ever owned.





Crown Jewel is his name, and he is an HR Standing Arab/Abdullah. Maureen painted him herself. She used to do that, take castings (probably from the mold shop, where the master molds were made) and finish them. Crown Jewel has the most incredible detail you will ever see... it was Maureen in her highest form, and shows us just how much detail she really did sculpt into the pieces. He has lip wrinkles, leg chestnuts, everything. He's amazing. His color is sublime. His markings are so natural. His eyes... I keep looking at them, to see if I can figure out how to paint eyes like she did...they are just alive.

I used to show him, he went around the show circuit for years. Oh, I was so daring! Nerves of steel! Now, I hesitate to take him out of the china cabinet. But in those heady, early days, I even showed him in performance. He has a custom made Arab western saddle by Carol Williams. He has a Governess Cart by Duncan MacPherson, and harness by Carol Howard. An English saddle, sidesaddle, etc. also by Carol Howard. Top of the line, all of it. Nothing was too good for him. He was almost unbeatable.

He's been retired now, for may years. My life is different now... I don't show, I hardly go to model horse events at all. I make them, I don't show them any more, and my passions revolve around moldmaking and glazing. He sits, quietly, in his safe corner of the china cabinet, a hidden jewel in a much diminished collection. In the days when my hubby was unemployed, when money was nonexistant and I would have sold an organ if I knew how to go about it, and I was selling most of my beloved collection just to put food on the table... he was never going to be sold. It would be like selling one of the children. Unthinkable.

Now I am pondering, considering, skirting around the edges of selling him. I hardly look at him any more. It is not right to hide him here. It isn't right to hoard him, when he could be delighting someone else as he has delighted me all of these years. He and I, we have fallen into comfortable middle age, and we hardly see each other any more. He needs a new home.

He's the most valuable horse that I have ever owned, or ever will. He's not only a unique piece of Hagen-Renaker and Maureen Love history, he is part of model horse history and my own history as well.

Still thinking about it. He'd be priced very high. But it isn't the money, not any more. It's the guilt. I don't love him fiercely any more. I'd miss him, but only gently, like missing a pet that passed away years ago.

Maybe at some point he will go up for sale.

Joanie

Spots, spots, spots!

Here's a Brownie that I just finished for a customer, and he's just bursting with spotty cuteness! He was done freehand with the airbrush, then rubbed, then back in with the airbrush, etc. Then his little hoofies were sprayed/rubbed/sprayed/rubbed, and finally sprayed again. His lower legs are slightly off white, because he has been playing in the mud. Now to think of a name for him....



"What is you looking at me spotty face for?"

Simon's Cat

This is too adorable...

Tobiano Dafydd

Just for fun, here are the photos of the bay tobiano Dafydd, who will be going up on MHSP in less than an hour. I wanted to show him here because I've been playing around with the way to paint to get softer contrast, using a typewriter eraser on the raw underglazes.

Instead of clean, strong lines demarking the white and the black on his mane and tail, he has softer, blended lines. That is from using the typewriter eraser to remove the raw paint on the high spots, then hitting it again and removing some more. You can see it in the tail image below.



His hooves also had some erasing and rehitting, so the grey stripe is soft, shows some detail, and blends beautifully with the shell color.

Joanie

1938, a year for weddings

My grandparents married in 1938, Grandad was 19 and Gram was 18. They posed in front of their new car, a whole life ahead of them and their faces shining with love and expectation. Times were still lean, but whether there is prosperity or hardship, people still fall in love and start a life together.

Spencer Tracy won an Oscar for The Life of Emile Zole, Judy Garland was singing "Zing Went the Strings of My Heart", Disney's Snow White debuted. Irving Berlin releases the song "God Bless America", and the echoes of Kristallnacht were an early prelude to the booming cannons of the war to come.

These dolls were also made in 1938 (except for the Flower Girl, she is a couple of years younger) Their round, sweet, almost Kewpie like faces were the style of the time. Little chins tucked in, big soulful eyes, their expressions were born of the Depression and the national yearning for innocence.



The Nancy Ann dolls that were made in the 1930's were priced very inexpensively, and were meant for little girls to collect. Unusual, because they were not made to dress and play with, they came in a signature polka dot box. Using good quality fabric and trim, they were meant to be displayed and admired.



(Little Bo Peep, an early Nancy Ann, was one of the most popular of the nursery rhyme series)

Nancy Ann Abbott, the founder of the company, was also a costume designer for Hollywood, so she brought a deep understanding of fashion to her creations. She explored, through her fashions, several themes. Little girls could go "Around the World"...


(Belgian)

(Portugese)


(French)

(Spanish)

(Mexican)

Explore stories and fairy tales...

(Pirate)

(Red Riding Hood)

Or history....

(Western Miss)

At the peak of it's popularity, the Nancy Ann Storybook Doll factory was producing one million dolls a year.

All of these dolls shown above were made before the start of World War II.