Griffin Lamps

After planting trees in the morning, I had an uneventful birthday, working on craft projects and restoring my latest acquisition:

I don’t have much documentation about the manufacturer of this lamp, the Griffin Lamp Manufacturing Company, other than this ad I found in the November 1970 issue of Western Horseman:

The company made more than just the Western Prancing Horse lamp; you can occasionally find similar lamps with other toys attached, like stuffed animals and die-cast trucks. In fact, I might have had one on my night stand when I was little; I think it was a vinyl bear? It was basically a big squeaky toy, and not (thank goodness) one of those creepy stuffies with a human face.

(It’s long since gone.)

The Western Prancer ones turn up every once and a great while; the last one I saw previous to the Buckskin was a Smoke with its original lampshade, and it went for more money than I was comfortable paying. (While Smoke is not listed in the ad, its absence is obviously a typo.)

The Buckskin one had been sitting on eBay for at least a month prior; I didn’t notice it at the time because I was trying to behave myself for Lent and not actively buying anything. So when he happened to pop up on top of my searches early last week, I decided to make it my birthday present this year!

He was in much better shape than I expected him to be, other than the missing shade and saddle. I have been trying to upgrade my Buckskin Western Prancing Horse for quite a while too, and other than the yellowing, I think he’s aesthetically better than my current Buckskin. 

But since I consider the lamp its own separate thing, I’ll still be on the lookout.

The numbering of these lamps in the ad is interesting, since it obviously follows the numbering of the original Western Prancer releases, with a one added to the front: Buckskin is #1111, Palomino is #1112, Bay is #1114, and Appaloosa #1115. This is not dissimilar to the numbering system they used for the Showcase Collection, which used trailing zeroes. Or even the Presentation Collection, which had the number 50 prefixed to their original release numbers: for example, the Presentation Collection Man o’ War was numbered #5047. 

All of these oddball releases happened around the same time (the late 1960s and early 1970s) so it makes me wonder if Breyer had originally intended to market these as a part of their own product line, but pulled out at the last minute. (In case it is not obvious, the base is also plastic.) 

I have a feeling that the replacement saddle for the lamp will end up costing me more than what I paid for the lamp itself. Alas, I’m already consigned to paying a princely sum for the lampshade, so I may just bite the bullet and go for it anyway. 

From Silver to Gold: A Chalky Palomino FAF, At Last!

Silver Dapple it is, then! On the Pop the Cork Nokota Horse, I mean. I figured it had to be a Silver something.

I’m sure I heard that color description at some point; once I heard someone describe one of the Pintos as "Sweaty Palomino", though, I facepalmed and decided that I was going to call the one The Tobiano and the other The Overo and leave it at that. On those terms, we can more or less agree.

Yesterday was my first "official" trip to a flea market since Kentucky. The weather was fine but attendance - and the mood - was a bit down because of an ongoing police investigation just down the road; this market, like so many others of its kind, is full of both vendors and customers trying to avoid contact with authority figures.

Still, I did find a number of nice things, and this was nicest of all:

A Chalky Palomino Family Arabian Foal, nearly mint! I usually find a couple of Chalkies every year or so, but I hardly ever find one in such beautiful condition. When I flipped it over, I saw why: drill holes under the hooves indicate it had been mounted on a lamp once upon a time.

That was a bit of a bummer to discover - a Chalky that’s also a Lamp would have been an even bigger coup. The Ranchcraft Lamp line, for instance, was just coming to an end around the same time the Chalky Era was getting underway - in the early 1970s - and most of the other aftermarket lamp makers (not all!) soon followed suit. Chalky Lamps are relatively uncommon.

The only other one that sprung immediately to mind was the Donkey. Oddly enough, this vendor had a Chalky Donkey, too, but it hadn’t been lamp-mounted, and it was in pretty rough shape. Its price was a bit on the high side, and since I already had one anyway, I left it on the table with a few friends - including that Hartland Saddlebred I passed by earlier this season. (Yes, same vendor. Told you he gets good stuff!)

Ironically, of all the known Chalky Era Chalkies, Family Arabians are among the tougher ones to find; I’m not sure why that would be. Condition may well be the key here: Family Arabians tended to get drafted into Carpet Herd duty, usually ending up well-loved and well-rubbed, Chalky or not.

Although it makes sense that the other Family Arabian colors still in production at the beginning of the Chalky Era ca. 1973 (Bay, Alabaster, Charcoal) would be even tougher to find than the Palominos, it’s the Palominos I’ve had an extraordinarily difficult time finding in both passable and affordable condition. I’m pretty sure it’s something I can attribute to the weirdness of my local markets, though - the same ones that offer me up more Charcoal Fighting Stallions than Matte Alabaster ones.

Other than a couple of black marks on the tail, all my new cutie needed was a bit of cleaning. A Keeper, for sure!

All the other horses I picked up, more or less, were body quality. This I am fine with, because shoppers picked my Body Box clean at BreyerFest this year. Never too early to start restocking!

Ranchcraft Lamps

Since I’ve mentioned them a couple times recently, in passing, here’s a helpful list of known Ranchcraft Woodgrain Lamps:

• Family Arabian Foal
• Running Mare and Foal
• Running Foal Wall Sconce
• Fighting Stallion
• Longhorn Bull
• Buffalo
• Polled Hereford Bull

There are non-Woodgrain Ranchcraft lamps too, but I haven’t tracked them as closely as the Woodgrains. Among the best known of these are "variations" of the Woodgrains: Family Arabian Foal in Palomino, the Running Mare and Foal in Bay, and the Buffalo in Brown. They’re desirable, of course, but not on the same level as the Woodgrains.

There hasn’t been a lot of research done to date on the Ranchcraft Lamps, mostly because they were not considered official Breyer products, and never appeared in any official Breyer promotional material. Most of what we know about the Ranchcraft Lamps comes from vintage mail-order catalogs and a handful of contemporary magazine ads. Our data is so fragmentary that we can’t pinpoint a manufacturing date: my best guess, from what sources I do have, is roughly from 1965 through 1970, give or take a year either way.

Have you noticed something funny about that time period? Yes, most Woodgrains - with the exception of the Family Arabians and the Fighting Stallion - were discontinued by then. While it’s possible that Breyer sold Dunning Industries a number of leftover Woodgrains from their warehouse, I believe a lot - if not most - of the Woodgrains they used were either special run or post production run pieces manufactured specifically for them.

The best evidence for that is the existence of two Woodgrains that are found only on lamps: the Buffalo, and the Polled Hereford Bull. The PHB didn’t even make it into Breyer’s lineup until 1968 - a couple of years after even the Family Arabians were discontinued in that color!

The Buffalo and Polled Hereford Bull lamps are, of course, the rarest of the lamps: there aren’t more than a handful of either one floating about in the hobby. (The Polled Hereford Bull is high on my "desperately wanted" list!) The rest are slightly to somewhat more common, especially the Running Mare and Foal and the Family Arabian Foal - I’ve found a couple of each of those myself, and I don’t normally find a lot of Woodgrains in these parts.


The Running Mare and Foal Lamp appears to have been either the most popular or best-selling piece: it appears in a 1972 Miller-Stockman mail-order catalog (for sale at a pricey $37.95 - Ouch!) Since a small number of these Mare and Foal Lamps also have USA mold marks, that’s further evidence suggesting that these Lamp-based Woodgrains were SRs or PPRs. The USA mold mark did not appear on the Running Mare and Foal molds until at least 1970 - five years after they were officially discontinued in Woodgrain.

Dunning Industries wasn’t the only company that produced lamps using Breyer models, just the best known. I have other ads, and other mail-order catalogs that feature a wide assortment of lamps from the early 1960s through the early 1990s. Most of these other manufacturers, though, used common, off-the-shelf models. While they do certainly have some appeal - especially to fans of whatever mold they happen to feature - they don’t have quite the same mysterious, romantic cachet as the Ranchcraft Woodgrains.