My BreyerFest History: 1995 & the First NAN Show's Paper Ephemera

Second Post of the Day

It was in 1995 that NAMHSA held the very first NAN (North American Nationals.) NAMHSA itself  began first as some chat on Haynet (the granddaddy of early internet groups) and then a meeting was held at BreyerFest (and later that summer, Jamboree) in 1994 where the formal organization of the North American Model Horse Showers Association was discussed and finalized. 

It is quite a testament to those early NAMHSA and NAN volunteers that they were able to hold the very first NAN the following summer! I can only imagine the hard work that went into it.

While going through the boxes in my closet, I came across a whole lot of information from that very first NAN.

The invitation letter to compete in the show.

Instead of giving out NAN qualifying cards at the shows back then, the show holders sent the NAN cards to NAMHSA for those who'd won them. Then, NAMHSA sent out invitation letters to those who had qualifying models.

NAN show tags for some of my models and my name tag (looks funny to see Illinois on there instead of Indiana!) 

The class schedule that was sent with that invitational letter. (The highlighting is mine as are the names of the models I was planning to enter.)

After confirming which horses I was bringing and sending back fees and the entry form, another letter arrived a few weeks before the show was to be held.

The cover letter from Kate Cabot, the NAN 95 Registrar. (Kate is still active in the hobby and is a very nice lady.)

A list of my horses and their classes. (My name has been put down by mistake in 3045; Windsong Sherif's name should be there.)

A benefit action for NAMHSA was also being held.

Auction Lot #1 - Kathy contributed a gorgeous western saddle and two headstalls. She's very modest about her tack making skills, but she is really, really good.

The final class list; circles are mine so I don't miss my classes.

The show's program that was given out on the day of the show to all entrants.

The names of those incredible volunteers who made that first show happen in such a short time. (If you were one of them, then thank you!)

The entrants were listed by state. Kathy and I came from Illinois and all those other Illinois ladies are still active in the hobby except maybe Andrea Morden-Moore. (She fulfilled a lifelong dream shortly afterward, went back to school at the University of Illinois, and became a veterinarian! Way to go, Andrea!)

Many, many familiar names of people, some from the past and many more who are still in the hobby. Beth Dickinson (Pennsylvania) and I have been hobby friends since 1971!

Next up? Photos from NAN 1995!

Stay 'tooned!

More Hobby Ephemera Treasures

Now that Pepper is settled in and doing well, I have more time to work on the research I am doing for the Mares & Tales project. Yesterday I opened the third box of ephemera that Nancy Kelly had generously given me. It was full of old hobby publications from the 1990s and early 2000s.

There were a lot of familiar ads in them, like this one from the Bentleys (how I used to pore over their sales lists!) They carried Marney's book when it was first published.

I thought that this ad was a good example of how the introduction of "home computers" (as they were called when people first began buying them) changed and influenced hobby publications. The photo doesn't show it very well, but it is a good example of the dot matrix printing of texts and illustrations.

Paola Groeber took over Hartland and brought it back in the late 1980s only to close a few years later.  "Hartland is back" once again made news a year or so ago when hobbyist Lisa Perkins bought Hartland's molds and began producing them.

There were also some non-hobby magazines in the box. Serious collectors (then and now) often subscribed to magazines that included model horses as part of a larger subject, in this case American made pottery.

 As I flipped through that publication, I found an ad for a familiar place - I had shopped at the Blossom Shop when we lived in Illinois. (According to an online search, the place is still in business twenty-five years later.)

 Some familiar faces appeared in those old magazines, too.

I've been buying my new model horses from Lynn (Luther) Anderson's The Model Trading Post since the early 1990s. That's where I got my Lightning Ridge and Dominante XXIX a few weeks ago.

Karen (Lebeda) Beeson and I met when she was a student at the University of Illinois. I lived in Urbana for twenty-seven years while Craig taught on campus, and it was so much fun to have hobbyists Karen Beeson, Julie (Poremba) Propes, Kay (Biberstein) Schlumpf, and Chris Wallbruch in town during their undergrad days. (Not an undergrad at the time, but Kathy Bateman was there, too.) All became lifelong friends.

 It was interesting to find an ad about the British side of the hobby...

 ... and an article about Project 88, an early attempt to standardize judging for model horse shows. (The project stalled after a time and then disappeared.)

While this box contained some very valuable materials for our collective hobby history, I am going to set it aside for the moment. I am looking for the earliest roots of the hobby and focusing on the 1960s - 1970s. That first box was a treasure trove for those two decades and will be given a very thorough reading. This box is going into storage and will be used when I already to move into researching the 1990s-2000s.

One more box to open. I am looking forward to perusing its contents!

Hobby Ephemera Treasures

Nancy Kelly, author of Exploring the Model Horse Hobby, brought me four boxes of research materials when we both attended Nancy Falzone's gathering of early hobbyists in September. Knowing that I was working on writing about our earliest hobby history, Nancy generously found room in her car for the boxes and passed some very early model horse history items on to me.

What with working on Susan's quiet book, a visit from Horse Buddy Trinity and her parents, and the October GLC show, I only just got around to digging into them this week. And what a treasure trove I found!

There were lots and lots of pictures from early shows, including at least one of Ellen Hitchins. 

Simone Smiljanic's stable advertised in an early hobby publication, too. Look at those beautiful old Hagen Renakers! I love how she named the Large Amir "San Dimas."

 A fun article from a 1975 hobby magazine from Liz Cory who mentions in the second sentence that she had found the hobby the same way that I did - by an article about IMPHSA in the October, 1970 Horse and Rider magazine. (I am going to pass this on to Liz the next time I see her.)

This 1973 piece of ephemera is a good example of the use of carbon copy paper for producing hobby publications. (Sometimes the carbon paper was red which was very difficult to read.) Editors would type each page with 4-5 pieces of carbon paper, retype the same page again on another 4-5 pieces of carbon paper, and continue doing so until they had enough copies of that page so that all subscribers would get one when the typing was finally all done and the magazine could be assembled.

Have you noticed how print intensive the pages are? It is because we did not have the use of copy machines and had to type and retype - we would cram as much as we could onto one page. (It also cut down on paper and mailing costs, too.)

A few lucky editors had access to ditto machines and would use those to produce their club magazines.

 It made me smile to come across one of the items that I had sent Nancy when she was doing her research. This page from the June, 1970 Horse and Rider shows a beautiful Zara being used as a trophy for a show. It also shows the Pen Pals section, which is where I connected with early hobbyists Beth Dickinson and Susan Seese. (I am still in contact with both of them!)

This old newspaper article documents some of the hobby's beginnings in England.  There is no date on it, but a cursory look makes me think this was written in the 1980s. I will look more carefully another time for clues as to when it was published.

I have always wanted a Julip from England! I was intrigued to see that the author was British and writing for an American non hobby magazine, Arizona Horse Connection. I wonder what the story is behind that?

 Western Horseman did an article on Virginia Orison, a woman who sculpted trophies as well as model horses. Teresa Rogers just wrote an entry about Orison's horses in her blog, The Model Horse History Project. Teresa knows her stuff - if you aren't reading her blog, start now!

I won my share of goldfish at old carnivals, but can you imagine winning a horse? Revell offered a "Palomino Show Horse" to the winner of this promotional. In my experience, Revell horses were not seen in the early hobby as much as their tack was, but we would use those saddles since tackmaking was in its infancy in the late 1960s/early 1970s. That sure has changed over time!

That was just a glimpse of what Nancy passed on to me, and it was only the first box. I have three more boxes to dig through. And since I am reading the old articles and looking at photos of old hobby friends, it is going to take some time for me to go through each one.

That is a task that I am very much looking forward to!