As promised, a return to pedigree assignment after all the excitement of the live show.
And so I invite you to come with me, gentle reader, back in time… back to the model Arab horse scene of the early 1980s, where collectors and customisers, keen to paint some more exciting colours than the standard Arab bay, chestnut and grey, had followed the lead of some real breeders in the USA and embraced the idea of the ‘Pintabian’ – a partbred with pinto colouring and a high percentage of Arab blood. Several of the leading model Arab studs at this time had added a few pinto partbreds to their ranks.
I was young and keen to get in on the act, and set about forming a little breeding group of them for myself. I sent one of my foundation Arab mares to Keren Gilfoyle’s stallion Mister Mogg, a Hagen-Renaker small Amir repainted to bay pinto, who was then a megastar of the British model horse world. The resulting foal was a bay pinto colt whom I named Calico Jack after a real-life historical pirate (long before any other, more famous pirate captains named Jack!) I was lucky enough to persuade Keren to reposition and customise a Classic Arab Stallion as Calico Jack:
He became one of my most successful show models and is still one of my all-time favourites. The main reason for Mister Mogg’s popularity was that he had bags of ‘presence’ and character, particularly in his face, and I was so pleased that Keren managed to give these qualities to Jack also.
At the same time I began to gather a harem for Jack, and was able to buy, as ‘Details Only', two fillies from model breeders of the time. One was a bay pinto bred by Marilyn Sweet; the other, a chestnut pinto named Tattoo You, bred by Keren. She was out of Candy Roller, a Hagen-Renaker Forever Amber repainted by Keren, who was probably the most successful PBA mare of the time, and by a chestnut model Arab stallion named Talis. Talis was something of an interesting horse, having been first owned by a young collector named Ian Scott, who tragically died suddenly in 1981, at the age of sixteen. I never knew him, but remember reading his obituary in one of my earliest copies of Model Horse News. Ian had been quite involved in the model Arab scene and after his death, his mother had passed several of his models, notably Talis, on to Keren.
Anyhow, I now had a couple of ‘wives’ for Jack, who became Breyer Classics customised by myself. Eventually I sold both of them, but before doing so, mindful of the need for Jack to produce a son and heir, I bred Tattoo You to him, to produce a bay pinto colt foaled in 2000. Combining his father’s name and his mum’s Rolling Stones theme, this horse of course had to be named Jumpin’ Jack Flash. As Keren Gilfoyle had been very instrumental in his pedigree, I felt it fitting that the model I got for this horse was one of her mini pewter ‘Malik EnNaseem’ sculptures, painted by myself.
Well, all this happened over the years without much fuss, until last year when I decided to go through my big folder of model horse details, setting all my pedigrees straight. When I got to Jack Flash, I found that I was able to fill in all parts of his pedigree except that of Talis. Talis’ parents, Vilmar and Bint Martinique, were both models, but I could find no record of their parents. Upon contacting Keren, I found that to the best of her knowledge, they had never had any: the pedigree just ‘stopped’ there. Because Tattoo You was Talis’ only offspring, she had never been moved to do anything about it.
I suppose some people might have been content to accept that as inevitable and just leave it like that; but neither Keren or I think that way. We do like our pedigrees to go back to real horses, and it was Keren who proposed that we designated new parents for Talis. Knowing our mutual interest in the stud, she suggested that we make him straight Courthouse, a suggestion which I accepted with alacrity. Out came my Courthouse book again, and I requested that Talis should be a full brother to the real mare Sappho, by Blenheim out of Selima. Blenheim was a nice-looking horse, according to his photos, and Selima’s sire was Bahram, whose photo I also like a lot. Moreover, this pedigree is not too closely related to my existing part-Courthouse Arabians (or at least as ‘not close’ as you can get with Courthouse!), something which will be useful should I wish to cross this line into my purebred Arabs. Keren was happy with this choice and the matter was decided.
Thus we engineered another piece of pedigree revisionism. There might be some purists who object, but to my mind, if a model’s owner cannot approve a change to an incomplete pedigree, thirty years after the original owner’s death, then who can? As mentioned before, Talis has no other offspring, so I am the only person whom the change affects. And now we have another pure Courthouse model stallion (albeit a very old one requiring back-dating for any offspring) with whom to play!
Thus Jumpin’ Jack Flash’s pedigree is complete, and is perhaps a rather unusual one, combining solid Old English Arabian lines with the much more exotic world of the American pinto part-Arabian. To elaborate: his two Arabian grandparents are Talis (Courthouse) and Magic Flower (almost straight Crabbet, but with one line to some 1930s Hanstead imports). Moving to his pinto grandparents, Mister Mogg is by Keren’s ancient Julip Arab stallion Sham of Godolphin, who was by the Crabbet horse Dargee out of a rather interesting mare of old American lines, while Candy Roller is by the real stallion Counselor, who although foaled in the USA was of almost pure Crabbet breeding. Only through the dam lines does the colour come in: Candy Roller’s dam was a real Paint mare named Cheyenne Cindy, and Mister Mogg’s was a mare of Catherine Dewick’s named Shadows On Our Skin; I believe that the original model was actually made of animal skin of some sort! Shadow’s dam was a real half-Arab pinto mare called Lady Yazoo, who was the dam of some of the Fantasy Farms partbreds in the USA.
This mixture is perhaps a little curious, but it’s very reflective of what sources were available to the British model horse scene of the time.
That’s all for now, but for those of you who found this post esoteric, rarified, old-fashioned and self-indulgent, take heart. The next one may be more useful, as it will cover researching real French breed pedigrees via the French National Stud website.
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