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!

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.