I Do Collect Pins

 

My claim of not collecting pins has been well and truly busted.  Gone is my restraint.  My ability to stand aside from these lovely little miniature horse models, the very essence of jewelry, has eroded to nonfunction over the past few months.  2D?  3D!!  I draw some comfort from the fact that Edward Bohlin, the famous silver saddle maker and artist, was involved with enamels during the last decade of his life.  While much of the hobby turns to Stablemates as a way to save money,  my ventures into such small scale horses means indulging in luscious rich colors and glorious textures of smooth hardness with the added durability of metal.  Some of these aspects drew me to the Decorators, all those years ago.  Is not tackmaking descended, in part, from jewelry-making?

The day after BreyerFest, my pin collection looked like this:

Compare to this, blogged about last fall (thank you Lynn!), November of 2021:
Here's the link to that post:  I don't collect pins.

You can see I've rearranged them so as to concentrate on equines,... and taken the Mink Unicorns off their cards.  Alas for the card manufacturers and packagers.  I no more collect those than I do horse boxes.

When I got home from BreyerFest, the Cave Pony Dulmener pin arrived.  I had decided to allow myself just one Cave Pony, (shall we dance angels on pinheads over the strength of my restraint?  I think Cave Ponies are obese!) and this one had to be it, given his color and historical connections.  I had acquired this year's 3 Special Run pins, Landler, Nicolas and Brahms, with scary ease.  I merely stood around the exit lawn of the All Access tent and asked people for the 2 pins I'd missed.  Ah, the open-air stock market!  This trick worked after about 6 inquiries and cost very little.

It is actually pretty hard to photograph these babies.  Low light is needed and then some serious Photo-Shopping so they're not washed out.  I shot this upside down (due to lamp position), auto-sharpened, and used Healing brush and Saturation increase, among others.  The top 2 photos are the most true-to-life color.

No collection is complete without oddballs.  The homemade cartoon Saddlebred is neither metal nor enamel, but I thought he was cute.  He came from a room open in the Marriott Griffin resort (next to the CHIN), proving that creativity is alive and well in all sorts of places!  BreyerFest could well spread to adjacent hotels in the future, just like the Tucson Gem Show...  oohhhh, what an idea...  

Thank you Helen B., my generous friend, for the Stein and his friends,--  the only Stein I'm likely to possess.

 

Note:  I would pay good money for a Mink Sayida, the chtnt Appaloosa Mare sold in April, as well as for a Zigmund.   Also in search of a Bastian, Zigby or a Manchado.  Alas, I am somewhat overdosed on Xanthian and don't want one... now how could that have happened... [see Dec 2021]