It's no secret that I love to collect circus horses and ponies. This fondness for them harks back to stories from my childhood about O'Boy, the circus pony my grandfather surprised my dad with, bought straight from a circus that was traveling through town.
Grandpa Martin doing a trick with O' Boy.
My dad's response when he saw his gift was, "Oh, boy!" and that became his name.
Manufacturers often produced circus ponies in pairs. Here are a few of them from my collection.
Breyer
In 1996 Breyer released Kathleen Moody's "Circus Ponies in Costume" in porcelain. I bought my set as soon as I could and as you might imagine, they sold quickly and are now pretty pricey to buy from the secondary market.
(This photo is from my files but it is not one I took. If you know who did, please let me know so I can credit them.)
Ten years later in 2006, Breyer released Applause and Encore at BreyerFest. Only 500 pairs were made, and they are highly sought after. I'd just had a major ankle surgery and was on crutches plus we were moving home to Indiana that summer, so I missed that BreyerFest. It took me several years, but I finally found this beautiful pair on the secondary market.
Hagen Renakers
Hagen Renaker's original circus ponies are older than me.
This is the red dot at the bit version.
The large chestnut and white ponies I shared in the last two posts were sculpted and released in the 1980s. They were modeled after the original release of the mini black and white pair of the 1950s.
Freeman Leidy
Clunky and with long eyelashes, the Freeman Leidy circus horses are my favorites of all the circus ponies I own. They make me smile every time I look at them.
The Freeman Leidys are big. They're traditional sized and were made in the 1940s during the California pottery boom.
There isn't a lot of information out there about them, but I've discovered by collecting them they came in pairs of pairs. This pair is the purple/green ponies. Those ribbons were hand formed and placed on each piece, so the variation among ribbons is really interesting. (So are those eyelashes and check out the pink lipstick these two sport!)
Then, each color pair has a reverse pair. This next photo is the reverse of the head up purple/green horse.
I think the plume was added separately. It is an easy place for breakage.
And Freeman Leidys are difficult to repair as their pottery crumbles when they break.
Look at the variation in the mane and tail ribbons!
Miscellaneous Pairs
When I was a child, I had a rearing black and white china horse in my collection. He was my favorite, and naturally he was the leader of the carpet herd. I have had a fondness for the old back and white, heavy pottery (similar to those Freeman Leidys) ponies ever since.
This pair may or may not be supposed to be paired. I don't remember but I keep them as a pair. (Hard to believe that that tail on the smaller piece has never broken off!)
This last pair o' ponies is tucked away in a box and not accessible at the moment. I wish I had put something in this photo to show their scale, because they are tiny.
They are a heavy rubber (like the old Safari horses were) and about an inch tall. I have no idea who made them but I think the detail on them is remarkable considering their size and that they were probably made to be prizes or something that was very, very inexpensive to buy.
Tomorrow we will look again at those Freeman Leidys. There is a mystery about them that I am trying to unravel and I will share that then.
Stay 'tooned!
