First Post of the Day
My very first model horses were chinas, made in Japan chinas. I was six when I got my first one, and was so enchanted that they began accumulating.
And needless to say, they broke. I played with them. All the time. But my dad would step in and make repairs and I'd soon be cantering them across the wood floors again.
I had Leftons, Shaffords, Clovers, Norcrests, Ucagos, Norleans, and more. But I did not have any Josef Originals. I didn't even discover them until I was an adult and my much loved/repaired early china pieces were all carefully wrapped in tissue paper and long put away.
An early California pottery started by Muriel Joseph and Tom George in 1946, the pottery produced horses and other figurines in the United States until the 1960s and then in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan in the 1970s and early 1980s when the pottery was sold to George Good in 1982. (The spelling "Josef" came from a misspelling of Muriel's last name.)
I have three Josef Original pieces, all foals.
In my post about Breyer's cake and candy horses, I mentioned that there are some Hagen Renaker pieces that remind me of candy bars.
This bay color does the same!
The JOs that I have seen have oversized eyes
and that helps me identify sticker-less ones that I find.
This candy bar colored bay foal has colored slip, a characteristic of many JOs according to articles I have read about them.
All three of my JOs came from a dealer at a Great Lakes Congress show.
They are not sought out by many collectors so generally they can be found for a reasonable price.
But buyer beware - as I did research for this blog post, a lot of the photos of supposed Josef Original pieces were not Josef Originals. They were other Japan brands and they were mislabeled.
An intact label helps, but we all know that labels can (and do) get switched.
I'm not actively seeking any Josef Originals or other Japan chinas, but were I to stumble across more of them, I'd certainly stop and take a look.
Stay 'tooned!
