Hark! Featured Model returns, after a 3-week hiatus! Hello and welcome to another edition of Featured Model, the weekly blog event where I pick a model I don't own (but this one I do own) that has an interesting story behind it, give some stats on it and provide commentary about it. This week's model is...Gooitzen fan Teakesyl!
This shiny black pony is item #711177 and was a run of 7,000 (approximately) produced on the Goffert mold sculpted by Kathleen Moody.
While this model is rather common in the model horse world, due to the sheer number of him produced, I picked him because when he was first introduced to the world as the Breyerfest 2014 Celebration Model, he wasn't originally glossy - the promo photo showed a matte black Friesian. This, of course, led to an outcry from collectors, because the mold had already been issued in solid black as its original release, Goffert (never mind the fact that as a portrait of a Friesian, one might expect it to be issued in black more than once). Anyway, this outcry led to all of the Celebration Horses being glossed to make them stand out more (although the original Goffert models were semigloss anyway, plus Goffert was used as a glossy prize model in 2006...so there are a lot of glossy Gofferts out there, from one release or another). I guess this story is only mildly interesting, so I'll have to come up with something better for next week. I am not sure what happened to the original matte Gooitzen, though it was probably glossed. It was also humorous to see the alternate names people came up with for Gooitzen - I was a volunteer that year and the Breyer people just called him Gootz. I remember seeing such names as Gluten von Tinkerbell, or Teakettle. Haha!
As for Goffert, he was an auction model for last year's Breyerfest...could he be this year's surprise model? I'm leaning more in his direction now that several other molds have more-or-less been ruled out. It's definitely a possibility! Not sure where else I'd expect him to pop up in the near future, except maybe as the next web special (probably not the animal or holiday web specials, though). I guess we'll find out in...less than a month now! Gulp!
If the matte Gootz was a sample used for PR, I'd think there's a fair chance it went into the archive room as-is.
ReplyDeleteDue to my personal language background I had no problem knowing how to pronounce Gootz' name but it does appear Breyer cannot put a Freisian portrait on this mold with a name pronounced as it is written! Lol.
Fun facts: More little differences b/w the 2 include fully detailed eyes on Gootz vs eyewhites on Goffert, & while Goffert is a stallion, Teakettle is a gelding (& the belly stamp, ofc).