I'm so excited - I've just bought this little Ayres rocking horse on eBay for £231. It's only 32 inches high, and plain carved, but it's my first Ayres! There are many lovely rocking horses, but Ayres are special; the Rolls Royces of the rocking horse world. This horse is most beautifully and delicately carved; small but perfect. (Click on the photo to see it bigger).I think perhaps not everyone realized what it was, as Ayres used different, three bolt brackets, different pillars and stands more like Lines for their tiny horses. I looked it up in Patricia Mullins' The Rocking Horse.
You may wonder when I will have time to restore it, given that I've not been able to work on Zaphod lately; but the start of this year was a bit difficult, and I am confident I will get back to my horses soon.
Which will be nice.
4 comments:
Very nice. It looks like it may be less major restoration than Zaphod.
Yes, the seller said the stand was sound. I'll need to restore the ears, and re-gesso, but I should be able to re-use the original saddle and maybe some bits of the bridle.
Ayres are known for the fine carving of the heads, and ones like this have very sweet expressions, which you can't see in this photo; but that's what made me look it up.
I would love to see more photos of this one, I have a tiny Ayres of similar vintage.
Hi pomona,
Do email me and we can swap photos. Perhaps yours has his ears still?
My email is lexi14 AT hotmail DOT com - you need to replace the @ and . They say spambots harvest email addresses, and I'm never sure if this is so, or I'm being paranoid :o)
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