The Conga Dance

 

A few days ago I was corresponding with Eleda Towle, one of the 3 fantastic volunteers for Identify Your Breyer (IDYB).  My original goal was to add to their database the difference between the Gangsters;  IDYB did not know (!), so, after hard search, I supplied this knowledge myself.  (For the record, the POA is Tony.)  I then told her I was eager to submit a new and improved picture of my conga.  I said it was one of my life's bucket-list items to have a conga of mine featured on the site. 

Stock Horse Geldings

To my surprise, she gently and politely informed me that this was not a thing to hope for.  "Be aware that we won't be adding conga photos to the new site, only individual model photos. ... our site is for identifying models, not a photo gallery."  She added, "Later on, we may add a 'side site,' to allow people .. to upload pix of their collections, ... and show them off, if they like."  She told me, "We get so many beautiful conga and artistic photos."

 Identify Your Breyer is brewing some great changes behind the scenes, and the promise is for much the better.  A new version will "look and feel as much like the original as possible, but it will ... have a dedicated search. ... each mold that has multiple names will have all those names listed, so searching on any of them will find the mold!  Hooray!"  

Here's a full paragraph quote from Eleda:

"If there are releases in that mold that we have small, fuzzy, or busy backgrounds for, though, we welcome photo submissions for them.  We are requesting solid white, grey, or black backgrounds (colors skew the appearance of the model's color), with good lighting.  Straight side views and a photo clearly showing the face marking are what we need, and we prefer them to be at least 1500px on the long side, which lets people zoom in to see details.  They can be sent to submissions@identifyyourbreyer.com.  If you'd like photographer credit, let Steph know how you'd like it written (both names, initial and name, etc).  :-)"

While this is not my only conga, it is my highest count and the one that most closely corresponds to the commonly accepted definition of a conga, vz., every color produced on a single mold.  I have always loved the gentle sweetness of this horse, who appeared in plastic in 2014 (he was in porcelain before that, in 2002).   For a long time I lazily pursued this conga, refusing colors I did not particularly like.  Then last year I realized I was only 2 colors off a complete set, less, of course, those whom mere mortals could not hope to obtain.  In this case that's the bay (test sample), the bay pinto (deluxe kids' club member) and the glossy Liam (only 45 made).  My 2 missing colors were the palomino and the current Red Dun Pintaloosa (here shown at far left).  I picked up the palomino at BFest for ten bucks;  my good friend GreyWoodsCat / Margaret Loesch very kindly gifted me with the Red Dun.

This is what they usually look like.  I am normally gazing up at them.

The white horse in front of the black velvet pin board is a WIA product, a Marwari stallion, one of my first 2 WIAs.  These also were obtained from Margaret.  My favorite dealer!

Looking down on them, one can see I've jammed much of my Classic scale collection onto a single shelf.  Behind can be seen a semi-conga, the complete Blossoms from 2012.

 The quilt on the wall behind was created by my mother-in-law, Ruth Young, an accomplished needlewoman.

Summer Prosser sculpted this gelding who embodies gentle grace and timeless simplicity.  He is classic for me:  not just the scale, but with the meaning that he has class and enduring appeal.

Another blog post about my Classics is here:  Reshelving the Classics.