An Incident of Spalling

Ever heard of spalling? Most likely you have seen it happen in concrete but it can happen to other materials, too. Ceramics are one of those materials.

Not only can spalling be caused by sudden temperature changes, but  flaws in the slip when it was poured, temperature fluctuations during firing, and age can also cause it. Spalling is not a common occurrence among china collectors in the model horse world but it does occasionally happen.

I recently discovered that spalling had happened to a cherished piece in my collection. I opened my china cabinet to get a horse and saw this:

A tail lying by itself on the shelf.

Next to it? A Hagen Renaker Sherif from the Monrovia era. Monrovia was Hagen Renaker's earliest era for Designer Workshop pieces so this piece is old. That age probably contributed to the spalling and loss of the tail.

Needless to say, I was dismayed and I may even have shed a tear or two. How could this have happened? I looked around for clues.

Because he is such a nice piece (Nancy Falzone has called this one the best Sherif she has ever seen and has asked to buy him from me more than once), I have always taken extreme care when handling him. He is also my favorite china in all my collection.

Whenever I remove Sherif or put him back inside the china cabinet, I move slowly and carefully. I set him away from the other pieces so I don't snap a leg or an ear off by accidentally bumping him against one of them. He is well away from the other pieces on that shelf so I ruled out an inadvertent bump.

I know he was intact and in one piece when I settled him on the shelf the last time I had him out. I enjoy looking at my chinas from their places inside the safety of the china cabinet and I would have noticed if that tail were gone. The break was recent.

Because the cabinet is screwed firmly into studs inside the wall, it will not tip, sway, or budge. Motion from the cabinet did not cause Sherif to wobble and the tail to break off.

Perhaps the Cowpokes and Pony Pals were responsible? Absolutely not. They know the china cabinet is off limits and they do a wonderful job of respecting that. They also know that if they want to see a horse, all they need to do is to ask and I will get it out for them. (Furthermore, they'd have had to slide their arm between multiple models to reach him - something else would've been broken, too, were that the case.)

In the end I was able to rule out any other way Sherif's tail might have been broken off and that left only one thing - it had to be spalling.

Years ago (WAY back in the days of Haynet and Yahoo Groups,) a china collector discovered a mysteriously broken model among her chinas and, like me, saw no reason for it to have been broken. She mentioned this on the china Yahoo group and someone brought up spalling. That person explained it to the rest of us and several other collectors responded that they'd had a random or unexplained breakage in their collections, too. The general consensus was that those may also have been spalling incidents.

I'd never heard of spalling prior to that and it was an enlightening discussion for me. So, over two decades later when I had my own random and unexplained breakage in my china cabinet, I was pretty sure it was a spalling incident.

Carefully I removed Sherif and his tail from the cabinet and took photos of the damage. Then I contacted my favorite repairer and restorer of chinas, sent her the photos, and asked if she had any slots open on her schedule. Fortunately, she did.

Stay 'tooned!