The Julip Live Photo Show

Wait, the Julip Live Photo Show? How can a live show be a photo show?
It's not, that's just the name!
Each autumn, Julip hold a parallel photo show with a schedule based on the same classes as their official annual live show down near Oxford, so anyone who can't attend in person needn't be quite so left out, and can still take part in a similar sort of competition. And for the first time, this year that included me.
So I sat and figured out which horses to enter, based on which I'd have been taking to the Live if I'd been able to go, and also took pictures for some of the ridden and performance classes - I've got entries which've been competing live for years but have never actually been photographed before!

After a couple of days, the results were announced, and some of my Julips were among the lucky winners - the prizes arrived this morning, so here they are...

Left to right, there's Petra (minus her cross country jump set-up - a big gravel-filled ditch in front of an upright brush), who won the pale gold first place rosette for the Ridden and Performance section. The Julip Live Photo Show condenses the classes into sections for the prize giving, so there's a 1st, 2nd and 3rd spread over all the entire section, rather than a winner and placings for each class.

Next there's big bay farm cob Arthur who won first place in the Moulds section, and his multi-layered green rosette for being reserve champion - look at the lovely metallic medallion in the middle! 

And on the right, sitting inside his bronze coloured third place rosette from the Pets section, is Pickle the cat.

As always, Julip's prizes are both generous and adorable, and tucked in at the front of the picture, you might've spotted this sweet little white westie :

Looking very proud in his little blue bow!

Just look at that face!

As it was the horse called King Arthur who won him, I'm going to name the dog Merlin, so they match. I've got horses called Myrddin and Merlin Emrys, but none as just plain Merlin so the name's still free!

Burghley buys

I've been a fan of eventing for almost as long as I've liked horses, and for the last twenty years or so have been going to watch in person as well as the rare chances we get to see the action on tv. Burghley's one of my favourites, as it's the first horse trials I ever went to (in the days of being allowed to stand in the free end of the grandstand and watch the showjumping for nothing!), and it's a great chance to see the top horses and riders tackling one of the biggest courses in the world. 

And I also love the chance to pick out models in person at trade stands.
For a long while it was the Utterly Horses stand which I looked forward to, then one year it seemed every tack shop going had Breyer horses scattered around the tops of their displays, and you could pick up a bargain the following year when the sales hadn't taken off the way they'd expected and they were trying to get rid of the models cheap!
Now I make a point of visiting Equestrian Bookfair - the owner always has a great range of Breyers, tries his best to have the new releases in time for the big shows and events, and always spares a few minutes for a chat about them - he always knows what's sought after, what's new and exciting, and completely understands how dedicated and addicted us adult collectors can be!

The mid-year releases haven't made it to the UK stockists yet, but this was my first chance to see most of the 2019s, and even some of the 2018s, in person, so I had quite a few to choose from. Here's who I picked...

The Best of British foal set!

I'd added them immediately to my 'Possible buys' list when I first saw the photo, and in person they didn't disappoint. Pairing two in one box is an interesting idea - sometimes they do this with classic foals and I don't always like both the moulds they choose, but here we get one familiar and already-popular mould matched with a great one making it's debut into the regular run range, both in the modern sleek and detailed sculpting style. What's not to like!

Firstly the chestnut, described in the box information as specifically an Irish thoroughbred. Not sure why! A good colour on a really nice mould, athletic and dynamic in pose, and with a pretty face. I've already got the pale bay Heartbreaker and the very dark bay Zenyatta's Colt but this one is easily different enough to be worth wanting as well!

It's my usual habit to try naming models bought at trade stands after real horses competing in the event - sometimes it's the winner, sometimes just another entry which just seems to fit, now and then I adjust the name a bit, and occasionally nothing suits and I give up and pick a different idea entirely! This one's called Spring Power; the real horse Springpower didn't complete the XC phase but I thought the name seemed fitting anyway - foals are born in spring, and it links to Annie Power the great Irish racing mare, also a chestnut.

And here's the second in the set, a handsome dark bay hackney filly with flashy white legs. I've named her Kamira, after the mare Vanir Kamira who did so well round Burghley this year.

The mould is called the Lipizzaner foal - but it doesn't seem to have ever been released in a colour which could be that breed, and nor has the mum it's paired with, even though she's called the Performance Lipizzaner Mare. The only thing I can guess is that the sculptures might've been commissioned as Lipizzaners, but Breyer decided to do more a exciting colour for the Premiere range which gets the new moulds first, and the horses just didn't make it to being plain grey mum and her dark foal yet. I hope they do, eventually, but in the meantime this foal mould makes a brilliant hackney, with that proud upright head carriage and stance, and I could see her working as a saddlebred, a gelderlander, or even an akhal teke for future releases.

After picking up the foal set, and a couple of the grey regular run Icelandic SM for my body box, I had a little rummage in the box of Mystery Horse blind bags, and with a bit of gentle squeezing managed to locate a model that I hadn't got by mail order pot luck yet!

Magnolia was the last one I needed to complete my series 2 set, so I was pretty pleased to feel what I was certain was the right mould in there; I also figured out another mini Alborozo so I can paint an extra custom, and I'd have liked a spare of the mini cob/vanner too, but I felt every bag in the box and there weren't any of those left!

I'll post some photos of the Burghley horse trials on the blog next time, but I'm only halfway through the long long process of identifying the good shots of each horse & rider, cropping and naming and saving them... and then there'll be the even more difficult bit where I have to narrow it down to the very best to share!

Copperfoxes!

Ok, I admit, it, I'm VERY late to the Copperfox party! 

The timing of their launch was just at a really bad point in my collecting history - I was made redundant from my job of 15 years when the company went bankrupt, and because we all knew it was coming, I'd stopped spending much on models at all - I think I went a whole year on only Stablemates!
Even after I started working again, Copperfox models at a minimum of £60 a go were just that bit too much to justify, and because I couldn't buy any, and wasn't on Facebook where all the marketing was done and the tour promoted, I kind of slipped out of the loop and didn't follow what was going on. So I hadn't even seen the later releases, and didn't know they'd been doing shows!

But I had always really liked the Welsh Cob mould. He was the one I'd hoped to get when they were first announced, the one I was really looking forward to when we discussed them all on forums, and the one I planned to buy in at least one colour - til the pricing sadly scared me off them.
In fact I even remember seeing him at sculpture stage back at the UH Hullabaloo and being impressed - before we knew what the mould was going to be for!

So I suppose it shouldn't be any great surprise that this has happened....

Yes, I've gained not one, not two, but a whole three-part conga of Welsh Cobs in a single week! Let's meet them :

First is Prince Cavalier, one of 150, a lovely deeply shaded and faintly dappled buckskin. I remember some seriously dubious dappling on the earlier releases and how relieved everyone was when the later batch of painters actually got it right! These are subtle enough to blend in with his body colour, and look dappley not spotty.

One of those rare, lucky moulds which look equally good from either side, as he's running on a dead straight line it's just a matter of picking which leg positioning you like best as his display side!

Showing off his lovely markings, I really like the adding of uneven-shaped and odd-numbered socks when it's a made-up horse, it makes them look like real individuals even though they're not portraits.

He came from ebay, second hand but with his original box, so it was pretty exciting getting to open him up - just imagine I'm doing this several years ago when the rest of the collectors got to experience that with the brand new models, instead of really late cos I missed my chance!

Second arrival (though confusingly bought first, because they got delayed in the post!) was a box of two, who came from the same seller - having been the winning bidder on one for just £34, I just couldn't resist trying for his companion as well so they could come here together.

Celtic Warrior - the second release of 250 models, not the Kickstarter one, which had mapped socks, different feet, and less dark shading. Having seen pictures of the two versions to compare, I actually do like them both, but the second ones have a lot nicer faces, I think.

Another horse with really nicely designed markings! Oddly the light seems better on this side of him - when facing the other way he seems to catch a lot of shadow in his neck and head, hiding a lot of the detail, I even tried taking him at at three different times of day and moving the set-up around the garden to get a better shot of his near side, but no luck!

I've got very little space in my shelves to fit more horses, let alone find a place for a whole new brand to display, but there's room on top of one bookcase (which, of course, now contains more models, not books!) so they can canter in a row along there!

All three came with their original big bright British-flag boxes - I'll keep them as they're so nice, but cos of the foam middles I can't flat-pack them out of the way, so I haven't actually figured out where to store them yet!

The mould perfectly captures that Welshie look - part big tough horse, part cheeky pony. Look at that cute face!

And finally, his travelling companion, Bertie, a special run of 250 which you could only buy at the Copperfox Tour live shows.

Yet another which I really like the markings on; sure they're not the most detailed or elaborate, but they're right, and that's more important - you see so many unlikely, weird or just plain impossible patterns applied in the model horse world that it really does make me happy when someone properly understands a normal basic tobiano pattern on a cob. 

One of Copperfox's main aims was to make British-looking models, the breeds and colours we actually see here, to make up for the huge American bias in the hobby in general - so many companies and sculptors are based in the States and they make what they know, which is quite fair and proper, but their ideas of what we have over in the UK can be a bit warped. It's so nice to see a model cob that looks like our cobs!

This is the only one of the trio to have gained a name so far, extending his release name of 'Bertie' he'll be Harecroft Bertie Wooster. I'd like something more Welsh-themed for the two purebred colours, but being a partbred cob this one can have an English name, and there's not much more English than a classic P. G. Wodehouse character!

He's missing the peg for under his front hoof, but I made him a replacement from a small piece of stick and he stands just as well with this, and I don't think the plastic ones are any more 'invisible' for being clear, anyway - you can still see them!

So here they are, my little collection of Copperfox Welsh Cobs. 

And no, I don't think I'm finished there - I've looked up what other colours were released on The Copperfox Guide and I'm thinking I'd like to continue this conga of Welshies. I don't do glossy and I'm not into decorators, so I wouldn't need to buy too many to set my target at a full set of regular runs - the light and darker dappled greys, the palomino, the black, and the chestnut. That's just five more to find, as and when they come up on ebay at affordable prices. Considering I found three almost in one go, I'm sure I can get there in the end!