Pedigree revision, Part II: England meets America

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.

Pedigree revision, Part I: A very English affair

In this post we’ll touch on the first instance of what I’ve called ‘pedigree revisionism’: in other words how, when trying to clarify and set straight a pedigree first created years ago, we sometimes have, or want, to make retrospective changes. You might be interested to see how I’ve approached this, which things I am prepared to change, and which I am not, and to consider whether you would agree with me!

This story begins a long time ago, back in the early 1980s when I was a mere child of about twelve, and a newcomer to the model horse hobby. One of the models I acquired at that time was a Dream Pony Arab in ‘mahogany’, as it was called, a chestnut mare whom I named Mystic Fire. I didn’t think I had many records left of this mare, but remarkably, whilst looking for a different photo for this blog (which I couldn’t find), I discovered a photo of her. So here she is, with all the glory of my teenage photography skills:

Having already registered some models with the Model Arab Horse Society which existed then, I knew that real parents were required, but being young and without resources at my disposal (no Internet in those days!), I asked the MAHS President, who may have still be known as Keren Heath back then, to find some parents for this mare. She came back with Magic Sun x Fire Crystal, both real horses, which I duly accepted, and that was that.

In 1983 Mystic Fire produced a chestnut filly whom I named Fire Opal, by an Egyptian stallion I had at the time. Shortly after that I must have sold Mystic Fire, because she is not listed as belonging to me in The International Arabist Stud Directory 1984/85, an invaluable publication which I still have and refer to on a regular basis. Unfortunately, I now have not the foggiest idea who bought her. I kept Fire Opal as a Details Only/Breeding Stock Only and eventually bred a daughter, Samarkand, from her.

Now fast forward a little to the later 1980s, by which time I was much more established in the hobby, and a regular with the bunch of reprobates friends who made up The International Arabist regulars. Those who were around the British model Arab scene at that time will remember that Egyptian-bred, and particularly Babson, Arabians were definitely the most fashionable, top-of-the heap bloodlines to have. This made things interesting for someone in my position at the time, trying to carve a niche for myself and my model stud. Feeling that I couldn’t compete in the Egyptian stakes, I was looking for something else, and having read a number of Marilyn Sweet’s interesting articles on Arab bloodlines, I decided to specialise in ‘Old English’ lines, that is to say horses tracing back to original Blunt imports (while trying to minimise those lines which later included Skowronek, who was very unfashionable at the time), and also to early imports by people other than the Blunts.

Inevitably, going down this road brought awareness of the Courthouse Stud, the small but highly-regarded breeding programme of Bill Musgrave Clark. Mr Clark based his stud on carefully selected horses from Crabbet, and also acquired and used three desert-bred stallions, Atesh, Nimr and Fedaan. He produced some lovely individuals, but always in small numbers, meaning that Courthouse lines had the cachet of extreme rarity value, which appealed to me!

When I wanted to create a new stallion I therefore looked for a pure Courthouse pedigree, but on the advice I received at the time, this seemed to be impossible. (Looking at the information I have now, I believe it was not). I therefore went with a pedigree recommended by Marilyn Sweet: my new stallion Siam was by the ‘fairytale’ Courthouse stallion Shammar, out of the Maxwell mare Kazminda. I was still quite pleased with this pedigree as I admired Kazminda’s dam Kazra and her family (several times winners of the Princess Muna Saddle for best female group), and this tail female line went back to another notable non-Blunt horse, the 1938 import Nuhra.

Siam was not much to look at; he was an OF Family Arab Stallion and never had much show success outside of Native Costume classes, but he was special to me because of his pedigree. I even wrote out and hand-coloured a version to show the percentages of various elements within it, as you can see below. Red represents lines back to original Blunt imports, green is other, non-Blunt imports and blue is Skowronek.

Because Siam was my pride and joy, I used him a lot at stud, so these days rather a lot of my horses trace back to him.

Now we move forward in time again, to the early 1990s, and Claire Ashworth asked me to paint a number of mini models for her.  One of these was a Stablemate Arab stallion which I painted liver chestnut with a flaxen mane and tail. I was rather pleased with him, if I say so myself.

Claire named him Fitzwood Shandai and chose Siam as his sire, but neither of us ever got round to sorting out a dam for him. However, when Claire later acquired a beautiful Eberl ‘Jamil’ resin, painted by Chris Nandell, which she named Imxotic, she used Shandai as his sire. Claire later sold Shandai to Sue Beard, with whom he still happily resides, and Imxotic to Helen Cooke.

Now it’s time to climb in our time machine one last time, and move forward to the present day. As many of you will know, Helen was tragically taken from us in 2009. She left all her models to her mum, and entrusted me with the task of selling those which the family did not want to keep. As a thanks for my help in this, at Christmas 2009 Mrs Cooke very generously gave me Imxotic.

He thus came to me with an almost blank pedigree, with only Fitzwood Shandai’s and Siam’s names filled in. My first task was to contact both Claire and Sue, to find out whether Shandai had ever been assigned a dam; to the best of their knowledge, he never had. Both were happy for me to find one. I had several possible mares to choose from, but I thought it would be nice to make Shandai ‘Straight English’ and I’ve always suffered from a dearth of pure English mares.  Rooting through my old records, I looked again at Mystic Fire (in her daughter’s pedigree) and realised that she was from classic Crabbet lines and would be very suitable.

The problem was, of course, that I had sold Mystic Fire, both body and details, in the early 1980s, and could not remember to whom. I am pretty certain, though, that it must have been someone who is no longer in the model horse hobby, and who never did a great deal with her. I therefore decided to ‘reclaim’ Mystic Fire, as if I had never sold her and she had remained at my stud all along. It was then straightforward to assign Fitzwood Shandai to her as a 1990 foal by Siam.

Controversial? Yes, maybe, as it involved ‘altering’ the past. But one of the aims of this blog is to prompt discussion, and I would be very interested to read your views. What would you have done?

That then sorted Shandai out, but Imxotic still needed a dam of his own. The thing was, by a mixture of accident and design I have ended up with no fewer than five of Siam’s sons and grandsons standing at stud with me, so I didn’t want him to be too closely related to any of the others. Both Imxotic’s name and conformation suggested that he should not be Straight English, but something more, well, exotic! (Besides, I already had a Straight English Siam son, Shalekahh, whose dam I actually leased in order to be able to breed him). Egyptian would be the obvious choice but Shalekahh’s son Salazar is half-Egyptian… What could I do that was completely different, but still fitted the requirements? After some thought I decided that Spanish Arabian blood was what fitted the bill, and happily I still had one Spanish mare, Habanera.

It’s nice to know, though, that Shandai is still there with Sue, a beautifully-bred English Arabian stallion aged only 21, and his dam Mystic Fire is now available to me for a lot more back-dating, should I choose. Very tempting, if I didn’t already have far more Arabian details than I have bodies…

I know I also promised you part-bred Arabs, but that would make this post way too long, so we’ll save that for another time. Next time, though, just to keep up the variety, I think we’ll talk about Lippizaners. See you then!