Yesterday I pulled Beauty off the shelf and took some comparison pictures with my new Steha-Leha Circus Horse, Moonbeam. There were some surprising differences.
Just pulling Beauty out gave me the first difference besides the color - his flocking feels plush and soft, while Moonbeam's has a very dry, rough feeling to it. I don't know much about flocking - does it dry out if it's not cared for?
There is a major difference in their eyes, too. Beauty has glass or plastic inserts while Moonbeam's are painted black dots. (Steha produced models both ways.)
Moonbeam is missing the green feathers that extend from the saddle blanket and out over the hips. I could easily replace those but with that white flocking, I don't want to risk adding something that might bleed onto the white. The feathers have been cut off by someone, and whoever did it also snipped a cut into the padding underneath that they were glued to.
You can see some of the green feather remnants on Moonbeam's back in this photo.
I would never have noticed that their hips angle up differently, Beauty's to the left and Moonbeam's to the right, had I not taken this photo. I put them together again to compare and see if it was an illusion caused by the camera angle and it is not. Their hips really are different.
Beauty's head is tucked a little lower and turned to the side a bit more. The spacing of the rhinestones on their tack is spaced differently, too.
The feathers on their headstalls are mounted in a similar fashion to a metal disk that is then inserted through the plastic of the headstall to hold them in place.
Four wheelies and no sticker for Moonbeam,
and three wheelies and a Steha-Leha sticker for Beauty. (He uses a metal disc made by Robin Mangus in order to stand.)
Research on Steha-Lehas is difficult as there isn't much out there. There is at least one more circus horse in white who is in a different walking position and has its head up. I'd like to find that one and its counterpart in black if it came that way.
I'm pretty swamped right now fulfilling custom sewing orders for the Mercantile, but when I get a chance, I will pull out Circus Girl and Little Lynn and take some photos of them with Beauty and Moonbeam.
Stay 'tooned!
