And the horses are back...

[beboots]

Now, then... do you folks recall this? And this? And the following horse? 


Now, then... you may or may have not noticed that there's something different about this horse, Low Down Trick. The mane looks completely different from that which we've seen so far, and, of course, the pose is strange. Well, this horse isn't made in the Philidelphia Tobaggan Company (PTC) style like all of the other's. This is actually a C.W. Parker Bucking Bronco.

Carousels such as the one used by the Johnny J. Jones midway had a hard life. They would have been broken down and loaded into a (series of?) truck(s) every week, travelling from town to town on bumpy roads. They wouldn't have been in an anachronistic building like this one is, either. These horses would have been subject to the wind and the rain as well as the road. These sorts of horses wouldn't last more than two or three years like that. BUT when a horse's head suddenly snaps off, or what have you, you have to take it off of the carousel... which won't run if it's unbalanced/ missing a horse. BUT then you have a dillemna: PTC won't have another horse carved for you right away, so you've got to buy one from a company that has one available - every day that you're missing a horse, you're losing business.

So carousels like this one would often be "mixed" carousels - that is, having figures of different company styles. Low Down Trick is one of several on our carousel. 
 The outer row horse in this image, Buck, is a good example of a typical PTC horse. The bodies are relatively blocky/rectangular, they  have oversized hooves, knobbly knees, missing back teeth, wooden tails, and veins on the face. 

 Buddy here is entirely different. He is made in the Coney Island style. Note the difference in the mane, the smoothness of the limbs, the smaller, more delicate hooves, the full set of teeth, the lack of veins in the face, and the real horsehair tail. Incidentally, he is also the smallest horse on our carousel (at 23'' in legnth) and was also the first of the horses on our carousel to be completed. 

 Gus is one of the neatest horses on our carousel. He's a Stein & Goldstein style horse, carved in the likeness of a Russian Imperial cavalry horse. (Again, sorry for the poor image) Note the chain mail, the oversized buckles, the mane, the real horsehair tail, and the ferocious expression. Another interesting thing about this style is it's proportions. This company believed in putting the focus on the front of the horse, because that is what the customer is looking at for the entire ride. The rear end is actually smaller than it should be (this angle emphasizes this). On some later models, the butts are almost comically undersized. 

 A shot of Gus's rear end.

Speaking of horses in different styles and unbalanced carousels that will not run and so on and so forth... Our carvers can't exactly call up PTC for a new carousel horse if one of ours suddenly breaks; they will run into the same problem as historical carousel workers. So they created extra horses for just such an eventuality.

One of these horses is on the carousel at this very moment. Apparently, a horse named Ambassador started developing an alarming crack in his neck last year, and so it was quietly replaced by another horse - Basil's Folly. 

  Here is a shot of the rear half of Basil's Folly - and a shot of Basil himself (the terrier on the cantle). The terrier is a likeness of the ex-dog of lead carver Doug. You can tell that this horse is a replacement, by the way, by the colours of the others in this row: white, white, yellow. All of the rows are arranged in colour schemes in which all of the horses are black, light brown, dark brown, white, etc. Basil's Folly is out of place. 

 Here is a shot of another extra horse, whose name I actually don't know. He's sitting here, on display, in front of the carver's workshot in the Exibits Building. The sign we just store there in case we notice damage in dire  need of repair on one of the horses. Or if a kid peed on one and we don't have disinfectant handy, so we can stop kids from riding on the horse until custodial arrives. 

What I particularly like about this replacement horse is his tail: 
 Apparently, to wrap his mind around how to carve this knotted tail, the carver had to acquire a big piece of rope and tie it in a knot himself, just to see exactly how it would work. I got that much out of him, but it completely slipped my mind to ask the horse's name!

In any case... I need to acquire new (slash better) photographs of a few more horses. I hope that you've been enjoying things so far, everyone! And if anybody has any questions about carousels (or anything, really) feel free to ask! :) In the meantime, have a wonderful day!
 

Comments

[ontogenesis.livejournal.com]

It's interesting how art and plain economics meet... the carousel owners were in it to make money, of course.