Live show highlights and musings

I don’t know if I’ve ever been to two live shows within a week before, but that’s what I managed to do recently, and very nice it was too.

First up was the Mini Manes Live Show organised by Sarah Hindmarsh. I’m very flattered that my British Breeds Live in April inspired Sarah to hold this show! When she announced a show containing 4 in hand divisions for mini models only, along with mini performance and open British workmanship, I knew I had to go. The great majority of my collection is minis, and also it was nice to be able to compete my repainting against other British artists.

I was particularly pleased to see the minis-only performance classes, as mini performance really is a discipline all of its own! It’s been a long time since I’ve entered many performance classes at live shows – it’s too much hard work! – but duly inspired, I set out to resurrect some of my set-ups from the past, and was pleasantly surprised when all of them placed and received MECS/LEMS qualification! I was particularly happy to bring this chap out again:

I first made this set-up almost 20 years ago; the gig I assembled and painted from a white metal kit, the horse was customised by me, I also made the harness, and the base was made by my brother-in-law. It did very well for me in the 1990s before being consigned to the attic, where it fell to pieces in a box and was ignored for several years. However, the week before the show I got it out, fettled it up again, and was delighted when it was placed Reserve Performance Champion!

I forgot my camera at this show, so for the photo I’m indebted to Clare Goss. Congratulations also to her for taking the Performance Championship with this Indian costume entry:

 

The second show was Equifest, organised by Debbie Davis and Nicki Collins, and was quite different. Here the performance ‘big guns’ were out in force, with the Performance Championship being taken by this stunning dressage ‘pas de deux’ by Angela Docherty:

There were in hand classes for custom-glazed china, Animal Artistry, other artist resin/china, and customs. With so many stunning models on show, mine didn’t do so well here, but it was still a good day out for the eye candy, the chance to meet friends, and the shopping, with several ‘artisans’ having stalls. I sold several minis and bought a couple of resin seconds and some fascinating second-hand books, which I might review here sooner or later. The eventual In Hand Champion was this cold-painted bisque Valentin owned by Ann Sheppard:

I’m moved now, though, to offer a few musings on trends in live show judging – the culmination of some things I’ve been thinking about for a while now. Please don’t take this as a criticism of the judging at any live show I’ve attended – it’s more a reflection on impressions received over the last twelve months or so, more from conversations I’ve participated in, than any actual judging.

What’s struck me is that when judging has been discussed at the shows I’ve been at, it has been overwhelmingly about the finish-work on models: for example, does a particular OF have moulding seams showing, or paint overspray from one part of the body onto another? What is the quality of painting on a custom or resin? Does it have ear-tip rubs or other damage? Now while these things should undoubtedly form a part of judging, in my opinion they should take second place to the more fundamental questions of conformation and breed type. In a breed class, those are what I would look at first, to determine my basic order of placings – then I would take finish-work into consideration to decide between horses that had little to choose between them in terms of conformation and type. And yet I hardly seem to have heard conformation discussed at live shows. I wonder why? Is there a newer generation of judges who see the priority differently?

It’s true there is a lot more awareness of what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ for various breeds these days, but often that seems to be limited to ‘does it come in this colour?’ rather than actual knowledge of what the breed looks like in real life. Again in my opinion, by far the best way to study this is to go to some real horse shows and/or studs and actually immerse yourself in looking at the animals, taking in their make and shape. Seeing a group of the living animals like this tells you much more than looking in a breed book, which will often only have one or two photos of each breed – bear in mind that those could be atypical or out of date. I know of at least one breed book in which the same pony poses as both a Dales and a Highland!

Of course this is not to deny the usefulness of breed books – I frequently consult them while judging, and have no problem seeing other judges doing the same. I’m just pointing out their limitations. I realise also that a model horse judge has to look at a bewildering array of breeds and crossbreeds, not all of which could you ever find a real example to look at. However, by the same token, many more breeds have been imported to the UK in the last few years, and I’d venture to say that there can’t be many breeds of which you would be unable to find a living example somewhere in the British Isles!

To end on a positive note, in contrast to what I’ve heard at live shows, it’s been really encouraging to see the use of this Facebook group launched recently by Jan Sedrati. Here there’s been lots of discussion of conformation and breed type in regard to various model moulds, with examples of real horses also being posted. Granted, it’s a shame the arguments have occasionally become a bit antagonistic, but at the end of the day, at least these folk are arguing about the right things.

Vive la France!

At last, a post about pedigrees!

It occurs to me that at some stage, I’m going to have used all the obvious place-related phrases as post titles for this blog. However, until then…

 I first became dimly aware of the Haras Nationaux (French National Stud network) by reading about it in the 1960s and 70s Riding magazines which were given me by an older friend and which I avidly digested during my childhood. In fact, my enthusiasm for horse breeding and pedigrees may well be largely traceable to those magazines, and I still have them in my loft. Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to visit two branches of the Studs while on holiday in France, and I’ve also used their website for tracing pedigrees, and just for general browsing.

Now, I only visit the website every 6 months or so, and every time I do they appear to have changed it, so the following is not an exhaustive guide to how to use it now or in the future. However, there currently appear to be 3 main ways of finding information on individual horses on it.

The first is from this page ('espace etalons'), where you can search for all the stallions which the National Stud is currently standing, by breed. From the name of each individual, you can go to a page which gives more details including his pedigree and, often, a photo. The second is this page ('info chevaux'), which searches a much bigger database  known as the SIRE database. This includes stallions, mares and geldings, including some of unknown breed/parentage, many in private ownership as well as those owned by the Haras Nationaux, and some older/deceased horses. I think it may in fact include all those who are part of some kind of national microchipping scheme. The drawback here, of course, is that you need to know a horse’s name in order to get started. Also, if there are many horses of that name, there doesn't seem to be a way of refining the search unless you are a paying member of the site, so you have to trawl through them all. However, if you do find the horse you want, and it is a purebred, you can access several generations of pedigree from here.

The third method is from the homepage: click on the map showing the regions of France and it takes you to a page of information on the Haras locations within that region. This is very useful if you are planning to visit one of the studs, as it will give you all the relevant visiting details. If you select one of the locations listed as a Centre Technique (CTP), you can then access (bottom right of the page) a list of all the stallions currently standing there, as well as lists of stallions whose frozen or chilled semen is available. These latter lists are often a lot more extensive and so are another good way of finding horses. From each individual horse’s record on here, you can select to ‘en savoir encore plus sur sa généalogie’ and that will take you to a page giving not only a 3-generation pedigree, but also lists of the other produce of the horses in the pedigree, and a list of the stallion’s own produce. All this is a useful way to find individuals who might be used as parents.

Of course, I should have stated at the outset that you do need a smattering of French to find your way around, but once you get used to the vocabulary, it’s really not that difficult. A few useful basics are étalon (stallion), jument (mare, although they also seem to use femelle), hongre (gelding) and poulain (foal). Trait means draught, so a cheval de trait is a draught horse, while ane is a donkey. With regard to colours, noir, bai, brun and gris are fairly self-explanatory. Chestnut is alezan, and roan is rouanne, although I recently discovered that aubere can be chestnut roan (Gris rouanne is just grey – in the same way that grey TBs can still be registered as roan in the UK and US). Isabelle can be buckskin or dun,  also possibly palomino,. Crin lavées means flaxen, although be aware that in some breeds, for example the Comtois, alezan crin lavées (flaxen chestnut) can actually be silver bay, and bai crin lavées almost certainly is. I’ve also seen at least one instance of a brown horse being described as noir pangaré, while a black horse was bai foncé, so it does pay always to look at the picture if there is one!

Here’s one of the models I have pedigreed with the help of this site: 

 

whom I won as a MECS trophy in 2005. Prior to this, I already had a set of details for a chestnut roan Norman Cob stallion, Prince, given to me by Morgan Haberman of the US. This was a son of her stallion L’Inspecteur, who I believe was a bit of star on the US model scene in his day. Roan is a rare colour in Norman Cobs, in fact it may even have died out in the live horse population and you will not often find it listed as a possible colour on breed websites; but go back a bit and it’s possible to find real, registered examples who were listed as roan. I checked out Prince’s pedigree and his grand-dam is listed as roan, which is good enough for me.

Prince himself though was foaled in 1981 so was a bit too old to use as details for a showing model, so I decided to make my horse a son of his. I therefore needed a dam. While on holiday in 2004 I had visited the Haras du Pin in Normandy, and seen a few Norman Cobs including this handsome specimen, Herquemoulin:

 

(We saw him and I made a note of the name on his stable door just before we were shoo’ed outside – we were only supposed to be in the stables while on the official tour, apparently).  I looked him up on the Haras website and decided to use his dam, Tapette – she was bay, but I knew that she was capable of producing chestnut with a chestnut-based stallion. As she was foaled in 1985, she was plenty old enough to produce a foal older than Herquemoulin, so I decided to make my stallion a year older. Since virtually all French equines, of any breed, seem to use an alphabetical naming system, I needed a name beginning with G. A quick search through a French dictionary threw up the word ‘garance’ which means the colour of something dyed with madder. Madder is a pinky-red colour, so this seemed a perfect name for my horse!

Addressing realism for a moment, I admit that it’s hardly realistic that a mare belonging to a French stud would have been covered by a stallion in the UK imported from the US, when there are so many home-grown Norman Cobs in France to choose from. However, I didn’t see many other ways of finding a real Norman Cob mare, and one could always argue that the breeder sent her across the Channel or obtained some shipped semen in order to keep the rare roan colour going!

The second horse for which I used the site was this Percheron:

 

With his heavy build, long mane, and more feather than is seen on British or American examples, I thought he looked more like the French type of Percheron. Also he is greying out from black, so I wanted one of his parents to be black. As his sire I therefore chose Lime George, whom I had liked when I had seen him at the British Percheron Society Show a few years ago: 

 

Lime George was bred from two-imported French-bred horses, and I was able to use the Haras website to find several generations of pedigree for his dam, Cayenne. Unfortunately I have come to a halt with his sire, Bouton d’Or, as there is more than one registered Percheron stallion of this name, and I don’t know which one is Lime George’s sire!

My model also needed a dam, and for this I chose a real British Percheron mare called Hales Uni. She was pictured as a prize-winning filly in the catalogue of the Percheron Society breed show which I attended, and then a few years later I was delighted to see her on the cover of Heavy Horse World magazine as the supreme equine champion of the Royal Show 2004 – the first time a heavy horse had ever won this honour.  At that time Uni was nine and in foal for the first time, so there were a number of ‘free’ years to choose from for my stallion.

Uni’s dam was Hales Juno, most of whose pedigree I could trace from an earlier, 1980s show catalogue which I owned, or from the All Breed Database. Uni’s sire Ryan’s Day Granitdier (registered name Ryan Day’s Granitdier) eluded me for a long time, despite being an influential sire among British Percherons. Eventually however he also turned up on All Breed. As he was imported from Canada, my stallion, whom I named Hales Paulinus, has a nice mixture of French, Canadian and British lines.

I hope this has been a useful introduction to finding pedigrees for the French breeds, using a resource that you may not have known about. I’ll be happy to try and answer specific questions from anyone who contacts me.

A grand day out

Here I go again, putting off the proper pedigree topics in favour of other stuff… I was busy doing things with my family during half term last week, so pedigrees have been neglected, I’m afraid. But one of our trips was to the Surrey County Show, so I thought I’d share some photos of that with you instead.

Going to an agricultural show has to be one of my very favourite things to do, ever since I was introduced to the Great Yorkshire show at a tender age. Despite living in Surrey for about 17 years we had never been to the county show, mostly because it’s always on the Bank Holiday Monday which falls in half term and we’ve usually been away. This year however we decided on a ‘staycation’, so took the opportunity to go.

Surrey is, to be honest, not the most agricultural of counties, and this is reflected in the scale of the show: it’s one day only, and not nearly as big as some of the county shows which have their own designated showgrounds. However, it still provided plenty of variety, from motorcycle displays through to wood-bodging, taking in on the way what I was most interested in: a wide variety of horses and other animals!

For example, there was a whole section of show classes for donkeys:

I spent quite a while watching these, as they're not something you often get a chance to observe. It was fascinating to see the differences in size and type, and trying to predict which one would be the winner!

One of the attractions in the main arena was the ponies' scurry driving, which is always fun to watch:

And then there were cobs, which are one of the glories of the British showring:

When the American sculptor Karen Gerhardt was over here recently, she was inspired to create a cob, and this was the result. He's going to be available in resin and china, which is very exciting. I took several pictures of this fella, because of his lovely patterning:

How about a Roundie painted like this?

British native (Mountain & Moorland) ponies are among my biggest favourites, so I spent some time around their ring as well. Here's a Shetland:

and because they're rare and I'm painting one at the moment, I made my family wait around in the rain which set in, so I could see the Exmoors:

This handsome chap is called Achnesgiu, by Liqueur.

However, what I love about agricultural shows is not just the horses, but all the other livestock and interesting things on view. Who knew, for instance, that there are eggs this colour?

or blotchy goats?

and then there was the parade of prizewinning cattle to top it all off:

All in all, a grand day out!