A little over a year ago while looking for various things on eBay, I stumbled across a remarkably well-preserved piece of model horse history, and in my inimitable slow fashion, I am finally making time to write about it. Regular readers of this blog will recall my surmise that the plastic Hartland Victor and Breyer Western Horse clocks made for the Mastercrafters Clock and Radio Company were very likely inspired by a metal horse standing over a clock produced by Dodge, Incorporated, a company that specialized in trophies, cutlery, metal serving dishes, figurines, and more. The horse was sculpted by noted artist Gladys Brown Edwards in 1947, and Dodge produced them in various sizes, with and without clocks and bases.
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| A Dodge, Inc, clock, circa late 1940s (photo from eBay) |
I intend to write a post about Gladys herself in the near future, but the story of Dodge, Inc, needs to be told first. It's really rather fascinating in my opinion---I confess I'm always a little amused when our weird niche hobby has ties to the
wider world, especially to fame and celebrity, and this is definitely one of those stories. Dodge, Inc, was founded by Ray Edgar Dodge, a native of Woodburn, OR, in the Willamette Valley just south of Portland. Born in 1900, Dodge was the son of a successful department store owner, but he didn't immediately follow in his father's entrepreneurial footsteps. In college, Dodge joined the track team and was so talented as a middle-distance runner that he not only participated in the 1924 Paris Olympics, but he also spent the next few years winning championships on an international stage. [1]
He returned to the United States in 1927 and went into business for himself with his Olympic teammates as his primary stockholders. He opened stores in Chicago and Los Angeles selling high quality class rings, medals, and trophies. By 1935, his booming business expanded to New York and began to include items like flatware and figurines. During World War II, like so many other American businesses, his company switched gears to produce metal goods for the war effort.
While Dodge did manufacture affordable trophies that could be ordered by groups like horse show associations and the like, the company is most famous for producing the Oscar trophies for the Academy Awards as well as those for the Emmy Awards, the Rose Bowl, and the Orange Bowl. [2] It's pretty cool to think that these famous statuettes may have rubbed shoulders with GBE's parade horses at one time.
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| Oscar trophies (photo via CNN) |
My eBay find of course was not an Oscar statuette nor even a Dodge horse clock, but it's something even better in my opinion. I stumbled across a perfectly preserved copy of the 1948 Dodge, Inc, catalog complete with a price list and additional product inserts. Paper ephemera from the 1940s and 1950s related---even tangentially---to the model horse hobby, is so rare. I'm sure most of it was produced with no thought of it being preserved for even a few years, let alone nearly 80 years. I feel incredibly lucky to be the current caretaker for this amazing piece of history, and I'm thrilled to be able to post about it here.
History is meant to be shared, so I will eventually get all of the
pages of this catalog uploaded to my Model Horse History website. In the
meantime though, I thought these pages were particularly interesting to model horse collectors.
The catalog opens with a nice piece about Gladys Brown Edwards and her sculptures for Dodge, beginning with the horses.
It also features some of her other animal sculptures, like dogs and wildlife.
When I bought the catalog, I had no idea what was inside other than a couple of random page views included in the auction listing. I gasped out loud when I found this gorgeous double page spread showing the Western parade horse in all of the various sizes and iterations.
I love having the original advertising for pieces in my collection. If I ever haul these heavy guys to a live show, I'll have the perfect provenance to display with them.
I hope you have enjoyed this little glimpse into the past as much as I have! I'm finally through the busiest part of the current academic year work-wise, so I should have more time for blogging again going forward. Next up will be more on the Chris Hess papers held in the Stone Horse company archives. That story also has some fun ties outside the world of model horses, and I'm looking forward to telling it soon!
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Works Cited:
1) https://www.dodgefamily.org/Genealogy/RayEdgarDodge.ht%23
2) https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-03-31-me-18962-story.html
