Magpie Model Horses - Two Wonderful Welshies!

I've always been a fan of craft type models - I came into the hobby via Julips, after all! 

The second brand I took to heart was Magpie Model Horses - after 'meeting' them in person at live shows and realising they were exactly my cup of tea, I started off by ordering a few brand new regular runs, then a few more second-hand to tick off the full range of colours, including older variations in different shades. Some special runs came out, so of course I had to get those, too. As the addiction to these welshies deepened, I found I wanted them all, and collected as many older Personality special runs as I could find and afford, mostly through ebay or hobby friends selling or thinning their own much-loved herds. 

Sadly, Magpie Models closed down production for a period in the mid 2000s, when the company was sold and the next owner didn't do anything with it (other than selling blank shell kits for a short time). My own Magpie herd, although still treasured, started to go a bit dormant, too. With no new arrivals, the ponies on their shelves were just there on display, looking pretty but doing nothing. 

In 2017, Magpie reopened, now owned by a fellow hobbyist, full of enthusiasm for bringing the brand back into the spotlight, and new horses into the homes of collectors. Although there's not been a new take on the old regular run colours, several totally new limited edition Personality collections have been released.

Recently I was lucky enough to find two of them on the second-hand market, and the first parcel of this new generation of Magpie ponies came to join my collection.

Their release names are Orion (left, Personality Collection 11, 2018) and Jecquelyn Hyde (right, Personality Collection 12, 2019), but I've yet to find the perfect Harecroft Something names for my own two - I'm still thinking!

This striking and unusual colour isn't a roany pinto, but an extreme fleabitten grey - she was based on a real pony the Magpie owner saw at a horse show, with extensive 'bloody shoulder' type markings all over one side!.

This other side, like the real pony, has barely any condensed patches of heavy speckling, and a very light coating of flecks through the rest of her coat.

What makes this already-unusual pony even more interesting is that each one painted was given similar but slightly different markings. I found a small copy of a workshop photograph online, showing nine models standing together before they went up for sale and off to different homes, and when I emailed Heather at Magpie she sent me a larger copy - I can easily pick out which one is now mine!

The welsh pony mould remains my favourite Magpie mould, even though I'm a big fan of the donkey, I think this is one of the nicest pony sculpts in the model world, and one works just as well in solid common colours as these more exuberant paintjobs!

Orion is also an interesting colour, a dark buckskin with rabicano roaning on each side. The old Magpie regular run 'dun' colours were actually buckskins too, as they were never given dorsal stripes, but at least this time he's designed that way on purpose!

Another feature of his rabicano colour is the little streaks of white hair at the base of the tail, carefully put in when the hair was bundled up for each pony.

His mane came laid on the off side, which I always think is the most flattering 'display side' for the mould, as the slight curve in the neck has the pony bent toward the camera.

When I emailed Heather at Magpie, she asked if my second-hand ponies came with their registration certificates, and kindly offered to post me reprints if not. So here they are, with their smart new copies of their original paperwork.

Magpie Models - two new customs

Last week, I started sorting out some photographs to enter in Magpie Models' first ever official photo show.
My little herd is rather retro, as I've got left behind by new releases - all my OF Magpies are getting well toward vintage status, from the 1990s to early 2000s. And so there's a strange charm to looking through their photos again after all this time - a nostalgia for the hobby the way it used to be, the friends who used to collect alongside me, and the excitement of finding a new pony to tick off the list, or sharing newly painted customs with our little community of fans. 
I never stopped liking my Magpies, the whole herd still kept carefully on display to this day, I just stopped having an awful lot to do with them when I wasn't actively collecting, I lost my place in that discussion between collectors as the various model forums fizzled out in favour of the modern social media connections, and they never got show outings as I focused on trying to make it to just the Julip-specific events.

In short, without ever really having decided to, I'd dropped out of the Magpie community, and my herd had been, if not forgotten, then at least neglected. The closest I'd come to revisiting them had been making up a welsh shell as a portrait of my own pony, a couple of years ago.

Going through my photos again had brought back all those memories, of who I'd bought different models from, and of shows I'd taken them to in the past. The happiness of finding that rare Personality model for sale, or unwrapping an obscure one-of-a-kind and standing him among new welshie friends. For a little while, sorting out pictures, deciding who to enter in each class, remembering some names they'd come with and others I'd chosen myself, thinking 'oh, you ARE nice!' about old favourites...I was back in Magpie collector mode, enjoying them as much as ever.

And it inspired me, to go to the Miscellaneous Dusty Stuff section of my body box (which, let's face it, has never been just one box, but an assortment of different crates, boxes, piles and shelves where I keep unpainted or bargain broken/worn-out horses in need of a new coat of colour). I knew there were Magpies in there; at least two Welsh ponies and about three halves of a shetland, right? Turns out there's three welshies, less shetland pony than I thought, and a donkey in two pieces that I don't even remember buying!
I'd set them aside as needing too much prep work for now, and...abandoned them for a decade. I stopped painting at all, even the easy Stablemate bodies, so the awkward ones stood no chance. I do that kind of thing, if my inspiration or creativity crumples, I just hide from it and do nothing for unseemly amounts of time, heh.

But lately, I've been painting again. SO MUCH PAINTING. 

So, I thought, I'd embrace this little renaissance of Magpie love, and customise myself a couple of welshies. I'd love some new faces for my herd, invented little characters wearing coat colours how I paint them now, rather than how I painted fifteen years ago.
It was about time.

And here they are!

I chose two patterns I've had successful attempts with lately, as the whole point here was to do paintjobs I knew I was confident with and the Magpies deserved, rather than using up my extremely limited selection of bodies on haphazard or tentative experimental paintjobs which might not really work.

Here's a little in-progress shot - you can see I'm economical with my stupidly expensive paint by not putting any on the bits I'll be going over as white markings!

And here he is all finished, meet Harecroft North Star, who may well be my new favourite from my whole long conga of Magpie welshies.

 

I love the way he turned out, almost exactly what I had in mind when I planned him - except for the mane and tail. I didn't have any mohair long enough to make him a loose tail as I'd originally been imagining, just offcuts from my newest Julip's mane, so I used a little bunch of that for the bottom of his tail, making up the plaited top with half a cotton bud wrapped in black embroidery thread, and finished with a thread braid. The 'bud' end is still there, pushed in through the tail hole to hold it in place without even needing to risk the usual messy glue tactics. The mane is more thread, a long thick strand knotted to form the braids and glued down in one piece.

A couple more shots showing all of his markings, and then on to the next introduction...

Harecroft Thorn of Camorr (a name I've had on my ideas list for a very long time without any pony to fit it!), a British Spotted Pony.

Why an appaloosa pattern? Because I've never painted one on a Magpie before, this colour has been going well for me lately, and he could then be a breed which suits being shown plaited up. Because again, I wanted to do the braided cotton bud tail and thread mane - although I had a long enough hank of this mixed grey mohair to make a loose mane and tail, I hate handling it with glue, making a right mess of myself, the mohair, and the paintwork on the horse I'm trying to hair. Avoiding the model-spoiling, and general stressy horror of glue based hairing, was a major deciding factor in picking this breed over a British native which need to be loose and natural!

I seem to have lost his front-angle shot, but here's one of his other side so you can see all the spots, anyway.

There's one more welsh pony in the body box. I've re-glued his split seams, filed and smoothed them, and he's waiting for a colour idea to strike. And then there's the pieces of shetland, once I've found a pair of both sides rather than two matching lefts. And I'm sure I can do something with this halved donkey...