Lady Roxana, Revised?

With a dentist appointment, Christmas shopping, the looming CC Appreciation Sale, and the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover thing melting my brain this week, you are not going to get a whole lot out of me today, except for a picture of my Avoriaz:

It’s a Filigree! I’ve  decided to name her Etelka, after one of my Hungarian Great-Grandmother’s sisters. So this genealogy research is paying off after all!*

You know who the PC Lipizzaner Mare reminds me of? The two-point contact trot, arched neck, an artfully swished tail serving as the third point-of-contact?

She’s kind of what I imagine Lady Roxana would have looked like if Rich Rudish had had more time to actually finish and refine her!

Normally I’d just be happy with this Filigree Avoriaz as my one and only, but I think I have to acquire the Rose Gold Charm version sometime in the not too distant future. I have been considering selling off one of my previous CC Appreciation Glossies…

Not this week, though. Probably.

*(In case you want to know – probably not, but I am going to tell you anyway – that my Belgian Great-Grandmother’s name was Alida, just like the Marabella Unicorn release from a few years back. Which I assume – like the other two examples I brought up earlier this year – is just a coincidence, unless a near-future release of the new Rhenish German Coldblood mold is named after my Belgian Great-Grandfather or one of his brothers. Then I might have to have a little discussion with some people in New Jersey about boundaries.)

The Lady

One more slightly revised Sampler rerun, while on the road.

Rich Rudish’s original concept art for the Lady Roxana, shown in the 1986 Dealer Catalog, was really quite lovely. She’s all sweeping lines and swooping curves - similar in style to the Sham, naturally, but it almost as if she was meant to be an Art Nouveau-themed interpretation of a horse. Was Rudish attempting to take the “Art” part of the “Artist’s Series,” to which the Lady Roxana mold belongs, even more literally? Alas, he is no longer around for us to ask.

The reality is, of course, quite different from the concept: the actual Roxana mold is lumpy, bumpy and kind of chunky. The rumors have it that Mr. Rudish had only a couple of days to sculpt her - less time, probably, than it took for him to do the concept sketch.

The hastiness of her execution is borne out by a Test Color of the Lady Roxana that I acquired from the estate of a former Breyer employee: since the mold wasn’t available for testing, a Sham was substituted, instead. At first glance, “she” doesn’t look too different from a conventional Fleabitten Gray Sham, though the differences are quite obvious in person. (Hand-airbrushed mane and tail, no pinking, no fleabites.)

In spite of her obvious inadequacies, the actual Lady Roxana mold does have her charms. She was one of the first molds to shown doing a correct trot - and a rather lively one at that, thanks to her tail. That tail that also helps make her an extremely “stable” stander for an action-oriented mold, which no doubt adds to her play value among younger hobbyists.

It’s fairly clear that many of her releases have been tailored to the younger set. How else would you explain Cinnamon, the Limited Edition Bay Appaloosa with the “pinking shears” blanket. (She sold pretty well, from what I’ve heard.) There were the Playful Mare and Foal sets in the early 1990s, too. Her most recent release was as the lovely light gray “Sahara,” from the youth-oriented “My Favorite Horses” series.

My second test color Lady Roxana - yes, I have two! - is of the Sahara. Actually, she’s probably more accurately described as a Sample or Preproduction piece, as she’s almost indistinguishable from a regular run Sahara, except with some handwritten notations on her belly.

Because of course only someone like me would actually own two (well, two and a half) Lady Roxana Tests. That’s okay, I really don’t mind!

No, I’m not starting a Devo cover band, either.

So yeah, I bought a bullwhip at the flea market the other day.


Why? The notion of using it as a crowd control device at BreyerFest may have played a factor, but mostly it was because it was there, it was cheap, and the thought of owning it amused me. (If nothing else, it'll make for a very ... interesting chew toy for the dog.)

I pretty much have the same philosophy when it comes to buying horses. I’m not the kind of hobbyist with a tightly defined want list: if something is cheap, and available, I’ll consider it. If it also amuses me in some way, I will buy it. End of story.

That would explain why I bought another Lady Roxana over the weekend. She was in the same collection as the Toadster, though in considerably better condition. I also bought her beau Sham, just because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time:


I’m not sure I’ll be keeping them - I don’t really need another Lady Roxana and the Sham, like every other Sham I’ve ever owned, has issues. Considerably fewer issues than most of the ones I’ve owned in the past, but enough to make me question his "keeper" status.

You know how there are some models you keep trying to upgrade, but in the end all you end up doing is trading out one set of bothersome flaws for another? That’s how it is with me and the original release of Sham. I have no idea how many Shams I’ve gone through over the years, but it’s been a lot. Like, running out of fingers and having to take off my shoes and socks to count, a lot.

What’s funny is that I’m not even looking for one of those "Perfect Commons" I talked about a few weeks back. I just want a presentable, garden-variety piece of arm candy for my original Lady Roxana, who’s mint and lovely and totally deserves it. And I just can’t find one.

There are probably a couple of things working against me here. The first is that most Shams were made in the mid- to late 1980s, an era known for its quality control issues. The second is my horse-buying philosophy: when you limit yourself to what you can find at the lowest possible price, the selection your have to choose from isn’t going to be primo.

I thought this guy might have been "the one" when I bought him, but nope: closer examination revealed a paint skip, molding flaws, box rub. He does have nice color and the wheat ear mark working in his favor, though. I’ll have to give it a little more thought.

A Real Gamble

I’ve been possessed by a very naughty notion for the past couple of days. What if the "mystery mold" for the BreyerFest Spun Gold SR turns out to be … Lady Roxana?

It sounds like a wonderfully macabre experiment: What would happen if you created a scarce SR on a model nobody collects? And even better - what if they throw in some even rarer pieces in the mix, like they did with the previous Gambler’s Choice?

(Actually, that last part’s not a "what if": they’ve said as much on the official BreyerFest blog.)

It’s not so far fetched when you give it some thought. It’s a vintage mold, we haven’t seen her for a while (since 2006, as the light gray #1234 Sahara), and she’s got an artsy, fantastical look that would fit in well with the fairytale theme. Toss in a crazy, metallic paint job, and I think we've got a winner.

(You're talking to someone who's got two test color Roxanas: our interpretations of "winning" are probably going to be a little different.)

Lady Roxana is more popular than you might think among nonhobbyists and the younger set, most of whom just see a cute little prancing horse with a swoopy mane and tail, and not a personal affront to their delicate artistic sensibilities.

Roxana was meant to be much prettier than she turned out to be, as Rich Rudish’s original sketch hints at:


As for what went wrong, exactly, between conception and execution, I’m not going to go into that, especially since it seems to be a topic that gets some hobbyists way more agitated than they need to be.

(I actually saw a hobbyist get red in the face at BreyerFest one year, whilst discussing Lady Roxana mold. Her argument ended with "I know what art is, and this isn’t it!" Being trained as an art historian, the infamous quote attributed the artist James McNeill Whistler came immediately to mind. Since comparing hobbyists to cows has been shown to be not so good an idea, I wisely refrained.)


I have no personal beef against her (the mold, or that hobbyist.) She’s not what I was hoping for either, but she has some finer qualities worth appreciating, too. Lady Roxana was the first freestanding Traditional mold to do a correct trot: it wouldn’t be until over a decade later that they’d attempt the two-points-plus-tail-balancing act again, with the Rejoice mold.

I also think she has a very pleasing, Art Nouveau feel to her which, considering she was originally sculpted as part of the "Artist Series" of molds, might have been intentional. Mr. Rudish is no longer with us, however, so we’ll never know for sure.