So when I tell them that the hobby has been around in some form, in the U.S., since the late 1950s, I get the usual eye-rolls and incredulous looks. So I'll go to my archives and pull out a couple of pieces of documentation to straighten out the wiseacre, including this neat article from the September, 1961 issue of Western Horseman:
Yup, that's an Old Mold Mare they are holding. There's a App FAM and several H-R minis visible, and that's a pot metal Western Horse on the shelf. A favorite quote from the brief article beneath:
“The miniature saddle maker's artistic talents also include pencil sketching and refinishing horse statutes in such colors as real animals.”
Unlike Breyer History, we actually have quite a lot of Hobby History ephemera out there. Prior to the Internet, the hobby was a paper-intensive affair: letters, newsletters, photo shows, the occasional newspaper or magazine articles brought us together and bound us together. I can remember stalking the mailbox on a daily basis, anxiously waiting for the next precious communique from the Model Horse Universe. A big, fat envelope with my name on it = much happiness!
As a student of history, I'm also interested in saving the hobby's collective history, not just of Breyer Horses. Aside from the research opportunities it would provide (i.e. being able to track when certain terms were invented, when color and mold changes occurred, etc.) it'd also provide us some standing and credibility to the Outside World. Showing the Outside World that we've been around for about fifty years will go quite a ways towards taking us more seriously, and proving that we're not a fad, and we're not going away.
Besides, other avocations with papery origins, most notably Science-Fiction and Comic Book Fandom, have made vocal and visible efforts to preserve their history and ephemera, so why not us? Science-fiction fandom just celebrated its 80th anniversary, in fact! (And some are celebrating by trying to find out what happened to First Fandom's first club president. Cool!)
There's just one problem: most hobbyists shared my sentimental attachment to this paper, and are loathe to give it up.
I've been trying for some time now to save the physical remnants of our collective history and create at least the rudiments of a hobby archive. I've made a few excellent recoveries and discoveries, but most hobbyists don't want to surrender the tangible evidence of their fondest childhood memories. Then there's the contentious question of who becomes the repository: everyone who has a bigger than average pile of stuff wants to be home of THE archive (including me!)
I first became involved on Blab when my name came up in a potential hobby history project; our initial efforts didn't get very far, for a variety of reasons. The topic came up again, in connection with the epic “future of the hobby” thread, and it looks like we might get a little bit further along this time. For one thing, a Facebook page has already been created to help collect and coordinate our collective efforts, and begin the effort to collect oral histories. A link to that page has been provided in my Links of Interest, to the right.
Next post – back to plain ol' Breyer History. Promise!
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