The Flip Side

The 2021 edition of Just About Horses is out, and a photo of mine is in there. But it's not your usual picture; it's the flip side of the photo!

Liz LaRose authored an article on the resurgence of photo showing, and asked for photos from the early days of the hobby. I sent her a bunch, but had to laugh when she told me she was going to use the flip side of one of mine!

She explained that she wanted to show how we'd entered classes in the 1970s and ensured that we got our photos back. You can tell that I was also participating in some of the model horse "breeding" that went on way back when. 

This is Pace's Hi Hopes - see that date on the photo? September, 1971. That show picture is 50 years old!

I love that model so much, and keep him out and on display on the shelves right behind my desk. Still looks good, doesn't he? Sherry Cook McDonald customized him and used hair cut from her cocker spaniel for the mane and tail. (Many of her customs had cocker spaniel manes and tails.)

Tomorrow I'll show some more of these early show photos and how some of them started like this.

Stay 'tooned!

Nancy Falzone's Gathering - Some of the Activities

While the purpose of Nancy's get together was to allow us to share stories from the earliest days of the hobby, she also wanted to do a few other things as well. We spent the first hour arriving, greeting, selling, buying, and swapping, and then we gathered in Nancy's front room for an early hobby trivia game that Liz Cory had written.

Nancy Kelly, Michelle Oviatt, Donna Connors, Yvonne Rott, Nancy Falzone, and Jeanne McCall's husband (whose name escapes me) all working on their answers.

 Linda Shawhan, Brenda Metcalf, Jamie Rott, and Alicia Strayer-Mangan. The tables in the middle of the room became covered with old binders and hobby ephemera as the day rolled on and we shared what we had brought.

Dawn Sinkovich smiles as Liz shares some of the answers - the questions were tough and covered Breyer, Hagen Renaker, Hartland, and Japan chinas. Then we went around the circle and shared about how we found the hobby.

Lunch was a potluck - I loved the horsey bowl of Nancy's that held the macaroni salad! And Yvonne Rott makes the BEST deviled eggs ever! (Photo by Nancy Kelly.)

 Nancy had had a cake made for the gathering.

As you might imagine, I loved the circus pony theme. Nancy told me that they are a vintage set from her boys' childhood and that there are seals, clowns, and other pieces to it.

  After lunch, Nancy asked that Liz and Jamie draw for door prizes. (Photo by Nancy Kelly.)

There were so many offerings to choose from, and enough to go three rounds! (Photo by Nancy Kelly.) I got the three sparkly blue unicorn ornaments (for my Pony Pal grandchildren, of course) and the flat victorian horse ornament in the middle right on top of the board game.

Next up was judging the display of our earliest show models.  Nancy had asked that we all bring our first show model and had had us set them out on a table with cups for voting next to each model.

You can see some of them in this photo on the left next to Beth Peart Weeks. (You can also see some of those binders I'd mentioned on the glass topped table.)

I'd brought Pace's Hi Hopes, one of his old show photos, and some examples of early show awards from the 1970s that he had won.

Everyone had a chip that they could use to vote on the model they felt was the best early show model.

Michelle Oviatt and Nancy voting for their choices as to the winner.  (Photo by Nancy Kelly.)

Donna Connors' lovely horse was the voters' choice. (Photo by Nancy Kelly.)

I was thrilled that Pace's Hi Hopes tied for second! (Photo by Nancy Kelly.)

The last activity of the day was for people to share their stories about hobby history. 

Alicia Strayer-Mangan, Jeanne McCall, Michelle Oviatte, Nancy Falzone, Jeanne's husband, Dawn Sincovich, Liz Cory, and me, recorder in hand. (Photo by Nancy Kelly.)

Nancy Kelly was behind the camera so much, I made sure that she got into a photo herself. (Thanks for all the photos you have shared with me, Nancy!)

Tomorrow's blog - some photos of Nancy's cabinets and curios.

My Earliest Hobby Days

In October, 1970, this was my introduction to the (fledgling) formal hobby.

I was an avid reader of Horse and Rider magazine and it ran an article about Ellen Hitchins and Simone Smiljanic's photo showing club, IMPHSA. (The International Model Photo Horse Show Association.) After reading the article, I wrote to Ellen at the address listed in the article and joined her club.

Those were heady days when the hobby was in its infancy and collectors were "meeting" each other through photo shows and pen pal corresponding. Live shows back then were very localized, backyard affairs. (Go here to read about the local live shows my friends and I held in the 1960s.) Photo showing allowed us to find other collectors and form lasting friendships with other hobbyists around the country and even the world.

I even bought a few customs to show. The first was Pace's Hi Hopes, a r/r/h done by Sherry Cook. He won multiple championships in the 1970s and is one of my never-sell pieces in my collection.

The 1980s were busy times for me as our six children were little and there was no time or money for photo showing. But I remained part of the hobby and then in 1988 when the kids were all a little older, began photo showing again.  Live showing had become more than simple backyard shows by then, and I started live showing in the early 1990s.

A snapshot of part of my collection taken in 1994.

Model horse collecting and showing brings me happiness and I will mark my forty-ninth year in the hobby next month.

Maybe I'll do something special in October, 2020 to celebrate my fiftieth year.

Pace's Hi Hopes

I came across this photo online yesterday of a gorgeous Appaloosa.

His name is The Secret Pardon and he was a 2009 National ApHC champion. He's beautiful, but the real reason he caught my eye is because I have this photo in my binders:

This is Pace's Hi Hopes, who I got in 1971.  My very first custom (done by Sherri Cook), he cleaned up again and again at photo shows in the 1970s and has multiple championships, reserves, and even a grand championship or two to his name. I was fourteen when I got him and had saved my babysitting money to purchase him at a whopping $12 (about $75 now.)

When I saw the photo of the real horse, I was struck by his pose and color and their similarity to my model, but as I pulled out the old show photo, I could see that they were not quite as alike as I had initially thought.

Paces Hi Hopes is no longer competitive and hasn't been for several decades. Still, he is one of my favorite models, and represents the photo showing era of my life back in the earliest days of the hobby. He is now displayed proudly in my china cabinet along with my Hagen Renakers. 

And who knows? I may pop him into one of the Vintage Custom Model Equine Congress shows, just for fun. Perhaps he will make a come back, nearly fifty years later!

Featuring Lynn's Oldie

I love to write, and I love to read. Add in horses, and I am a happy girl. Needless to say, then, that horsey blogs are my favorite, and I follow many.

Collecting model horses is a long time hobby for me, and so those blogs that focus on collecting are favorites. Imagine, then, my smile when I clicked on the link to Kirsten Wellman's Model Horse Collectibility blog and saw my own model featured!

(Screenshot of Kirsten's blog taken and posted with permission.)

It was fun to see a photo of my earliest custom piece, Pace's Hi Hopes, from Hoosier Pony Live.

(Photo by Kirsten Wellman and used with permission.)

I bought this piece in 1971, and he was the oldest custom piece at the show. I'd included his old show photos, several of which were date-stamped and thus documented that he really was as old as I said he was.

Thanks, Kirsten, for featuring my guy and making me smile!

Helping Document Hobby History, Part Two

This is part two of a series of pictures and notes that I sent to Nancy Kelly who is working on documenting early hobby history.

In the early 1970s, customized models began turning up in photo shows. They often blew the competition away. Kathy Maestas did a booklet that she sold to hobbyists about customizing and showing. She was considered a top notch customizer as were Linda Leach (Hardy) and Sherri Cook. Prices for customs were about $25 and they usually came with a set of show pictures.

For $12 (a high price back then!) I was barely able to afford a customized Hartland by Sherri Cook, Pace's Hi Hopes.

That piece won ribbon after ribbon, championship after championship. Now, he's not competitive at all, but he most definitely is a valued piece of hobby history as one of the earliest examples of customizing that has survived over time.

(Stay tuned - there are five more parts to come!)