More Celtic Ponies: Beswick's Terese of Leam

While cruising Facebook a couple of weeks ago, I was served up a reel that showed a lovely parade of Connemara pony stallions entering the show ring at the 2025 Dublin Horse Show. As I've mentioned before, I'm a shameless Celtophile, and that includes everything from ancient history and archaeology to music to modern native ponies. Facebook has continued to suggest more Connemara Pony content for me everyday since, and I am 100% on board with this algorithmic trend. 

It reminded me however of a back-burner grail I've been wanting for a number of years, the Beswick Connemara Pony "Terese of Leam." I've looked at dozens of them on eBay over the years, but not surprisingly, nearly all of them were being sold from Britain (where Beswicks originate), and I always worry about clinkies making the long journey across the Atlantic, especially after seeing on the Facebook Beswick collectors group how many Bessies get absolutely smashed just traveling within the UK. 

On a whim, I opened a new tab and had a quick look through eBay. I found a broken but cheap example stateside and added it to my watch list. I've had a ton of practice fixing broken clinkies, so I don't mind repaired pieces in my collection. But then I promptly forgot about it until after it sold for a bargain basement price. Doh! Cue opening a tab and looking at Beswick ponies again. I was delighted to find another nice Connemara that was here in the US being sold by a fellow china collector, that was priced reasonably, and that also happened to have an original hang tag. I am a sucker for paper ephemera, and I was gratified to see the seller's assurance that they would pack the pony in foam (the safest way to ship clinkies), so all of these factors felt like fate telling me to buy the pony.

(Also, the pony told me her name (Jenny of Oldstones) which is when I know a model has to join my herd. Once they have a name, it's all over. This is also how I came to have a Raakid resin (Gil-Galad). (As you can see, there is a decidedly nerdy bent to my model horse naming conventions.))

Anyway, I was the only bidder, and my lovely new Beswick Connemara Pony arrived safe and sound. I don't collect many Beswicks, but I really like the Mountain and Moorland pony series, and I hope to eventually acquire all nine of them. So far, I have three---in addition to the Connemara, I also have the Highland Pony and the Welsh Mountain Pony (as well as the Fjord whom I consider an honorary tenth member despite being a Norwegian breed). 

Having received my lovely new pony and delightedly taken some photos of her, I carefully tucked her into my china cabinet and then sat down at my computer to Google the real Terese of Leam. Her little Beswick hang tag said she was a champion, so I figured her story would make for a quick and easy blog post. How wrong I was!

Welcome to the herd!

Google produced links to dozens of Beswick ponies, but nothing at all about the real mare. I surfed over to allbreedpedigree.com which did not have a listing for Terese of Leam but instead had one for Teresa of Leam. Mysteriously, her pedigree was entirely blank---all of her forebears were listed as "unknown." The site did at least list her birth year (1943) and her registration number with the Connemara Society as well as a few of her offspring. There was also an intriguing note that her name had been changed. A bit more Googling turned up her other name, Waterfield Grey, on a German pedigree site but still no known parentage. 

My curiosity was piqued. How could Terese of Leam have been famous enough to attract the interest of Beswick's main equestrian sculptor Arthur Gredington but have essentially no information about her at all available online? How could a champion pony's pedigree not even be known? Why did her name change and did Beswick spell it wrong? To find answers, I reached out to some Connemara breeders on Facebook to see if anyone could shed some light on her story. They directed me to a couple of excellent books by Pat Lyne, a Connemara breeder and the founder of the annual publication The Connemara Chronicle. While the books only contained a few references to Teresa of Leam, I was able to piece together a reasonable history for the mare.

Teresa of Leam's story is closely tied to the formal organization of the Connemara Pony registry that began in 1923. And that organization, or at least the date of its founding, very likely has its origins in Ireland's struggle for independence from English rule. To make a very long, very bloody story very short, England has been meddling in Irish rule since at least the 12th century. Needless to say, this was not popular in Ireland, especially after the Reformation and Henry VIII's refutation of Catholicism. In the late 1800s where our story really gets started, the occupying English government in County Galway on the western coast of Ireland decided that the local horses and ponies were in dire need of improvement. To remedy this, they introduced several stallions to the area to breed to qualified mares, most of which were Hackneys (to the consternation of the locals), as well as a few Welsh, Arab, and TB stallions. [1]

By 1901, Galway natives had become concerned that the old type of pony found in the Connemara region of that county had become scarce. However, the first two decades of the twentieth century were a time of intense upheaval not only with World War I in Europe but in particular with a war for home rule in Ireland. In 1922, the conflict was finally resolved (to some extent) with Northern Ireland remaining a part of the United Kingdom and the rest if Ireland including Galway becoming an independent nation. 

In 1923 then, concerned Connemara natives were finally able to formally organize a registry for the hardy ponies of their region. Ponies were inspected by members of the newly formed Connemara Pony Society and assigned registry numbers if they passed muster. It is against this backdrop that Teresa of Leam's story begins. She was foaled near Oughterard, Ireland, in 1943, and a few years later, she was "spotted over a stone wall" by leading Connemara Pony breeder Jack Bolger who bought her and registered her as Waterfield Grey. According to author Pat Lyne, "she had no known pedigree but was a mare who showed some class and plenty of type and was accepted for registration on inspection." [2]

In 1947, John and Phyllis O'Mahony Meade founded Leam Stud in Chepstow, Wales. [3] They were good friends of Jack Bolger and his wife Teresa and purchased some foundation stock for their pony breeding venture from the Bolgers. One of those ponies was Waterfield Grey whom they renamed Teresa of Leam. Jack's grandson Henry confirmed to me that the Meade's renamed the mare in honor of his grandmother. 

While I haven't been able to find out a great deal about the specifics of Teresa's show career other than she was Supreme Champion at the English Connemara Pony Society's show in 1955 and 1956, by all accounts, she was a well-known and regular winner at other important shows in the 1950s and 1960s. Pat Lyne wrote that Connemara Pony breeding was still very much in its infancy in England at that time, [4] so presumably, her winning ways are how she came to the attention of Beswick. The photo below is the only one I have been able to find of the real Teresa of Leam. 

The real mare from Pat Lyne's excellent book Out of the Mist:
A Further Study of the Connemara Pony Throughout the 
World Wherever He is Bred and Used (1990)

Teresa of Leam also became a noteworthy broodmare. Though only four of her offspring were registered, she produced at least six foals between the early 1950s and 1964. They were Paddy of Leam (gelding, imported in utero, early 1950s), Finola of Leam (mare, 1958), Keirin of Leam (stallion, 1959), Feargus of Leam (stallion, 1960), Leam Trefoil (mare, 1964), and Kevin of Leam (unknown).

Keirin of Leam proved to be a reasonably successful sire in England before being exported to South Africa in 1967 and then to Zimbabwe the following year. He was crossed with a variety of breeds there and his offspring were reported to be excellent saddle horses. But Teresa's real legacy was passed on through her stellar daughter Finola of Leam. 

Finola was by the highly influential stallion Lavalley Rebel who was a tail male grandson of Cannon Ball, the very first pony registered with the Connemara Pony Society. She was sent back to Ireland to be bred with the top stallion there, Carna Bobby, and produced two champion stallions by him, Coosheen Finn and Leam Bobby Finn. Pat Lyne wrote that Leam Bobby Finn was the most influential sire of the 1970s in England [5], and his impact on English Connemara breeding was comparable to that of his sire's influence in Ireland. [6] Leam Bobby Finn's prepotency is still alive in Connemara pedigrees today. His grandson Dexter Leam Pondi for example was a terrific show jumper and prolific sire. Like many Connemaras, Finola and Teresa's offspring were talented jumpers and have passed along that ability for generations.

In the early 1960s, Teresa of Leam was still an active show pony and broodmare. In 1961, Beswick introduced its Mountain and Moorland line of Native ponies including their likeness of Teresa as model number 1641. Somewhere along the line, the spelling of her name seems to have been confused, and Beswick called her Terese rather than Teresa. Like most of Beswick's horses, the model was sculpted by Arthur Gredington, and it remained in production until 1984. My pony has a tiny glazed number 97 on her belly which indicates the Beswick decorator who painted her. In this case, that would be Sandra Massey who apparently worked for the company for 15 years. Sandra did a particularly lovely job on my pony---in addition to the soft grey color and the nice dappling, this pony also has subtle grey shading all over that brings out the surprising crispness of the mold.

I have been super frugal with pony purchases in the last year and a half out of necessity, so I'm exceedingly pleased that my (frankly cheap) new Bessie is a really stellar example of the Connemara run. It's truly one of Gredington's nicest sculptures in my opinion. I just wish it came in more colors! 

Having been immersed in Connemara Pony history for the last few weeks now, I have a desperate itch to hop on a plane and visit Ireland. Obviously, that's not in the cards for me any time soon, but it's definitely a bucket list item for many reasons. In the meantime, I'm going to have to seek out physical copies of Pat Lyne's books to further immerse myself in the story of these wonderful ponies. Pat visited Ireland many times and collected the story of the Connemara breed from letters, diaries, and the families of the people involved in founding the breed society. She sadly passed away in February of 2021 at the age of 91, but she left behind an incredible legacy in the knowledge she compiled and shared about the history of the breed she loved best. I am so grateful for her insights into Teresa of Leam, her offspring, and her impact on the Connemara Pony breed.


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1) Lyne, Pat. Shrouded in Mist, A Study of the Connemara Pony From its Earliest Days to 1963. (Leominster, England: Orphans Press Ltd., 1984), 31.

2) Lyne, Pat. Out of the Mist: A Further Study of the Connemara Pony Throughout the World Wherever He is Bred and Used. (Leominster, England: Orphans Press Ltd., 1990), 47.

3) Ibid, 10.

4) Ibid, 67.

5) Ibid, 11.

6) Ibid, 25.

The Chris Hess Papers: History is Meant to be Shared

I apologize that this has taken me much longer to write than I had originally planned, but I wanted to tell Chris Hess' story to the best of my ability. As Breyer's primary sculptor for nearly 40 years, Hess' work shaped and influenced our hobby in a multitude of ways. His story is important because he was so much more than "just" a model horse sculptor---he was also a draftsman, a wood carver, a mold maker, a problem solver, an innovator, and more. Not surprisingly, the research for this post led me down all sorts of interesting sidetracks and rabbit holes that I want to follow, and I will do my best to share all of the neat connections I found as coherently as possible, if not in this post, then in subsequent follow ups. 

The impetus for this tale began last year not long after Erin Corbett and her Volo Artem team purchased Stone Horses (formerly the Peter Stone Company). Peter entrusted Erin as the new keeper of several boxes full of the company's historical paperwork, some of which had once belonged to Breyer and Stone artist Chris Hess. (For those unaware of the history, Peter is the son of Sam Stone who co-founded the Breyer Molding Company in 1943, and Peter worked for and later owned the company until it was bought out by Reeves International in 1984. When Peter eventually left Breyer in 1996 to start his own company, the first piece his new company produced was a Chris Hess sculpture that Breyer had rejected.) 

Pretty much every collector knows that Chris Hess sculpted the majority of Breyer's models from the very beginning of the horse and animal line in 1950 until his death in 1988. In that span of nearly 40 years, Hess sculpted 100 horses for Breyer (74 Traditional, 19 Classics, and 7 Little Bits) as well as 27 animal molds (if I counted correctly). He also sculpted at least two more horses that were rejected by Breyer and later produced by Stone, the rearing horse Trouble and the landing Jumping Horse. While the many Breyer horses he sculpted are probably his greatest legacy, he sculpted a number of other interesting pieces "including the children’s riding toy known as the 'Wonder Horse,' Santa Claus figures, [and] art and advertising pieces. Christian was [also] the sculptor and mold maker responsible for many of those familiar plastic pink yard flamingos." (1) 

There are many, many spring horses called the Wonder Horse,
so I'm not sure which one Hess sculpted, but this is a very
early example from the late 1940s.

Christian Fritz Hess was born in Chicago, IL, on August 6, 1916. While there isn't really any information available about Hess' childhood, we do know he studied at the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago. And this is where the first rabbit hole appeared for me. One of the very first things that grabbed my attention while looking through Hess' papers with Erin was a series of very old pages from the classic animal anatomy book Handbuch der Anatomie der Tiere für Künstler stamped "Property of Elizabeth Haseltine." The name was immediately familiar, but it took me a moment to remember why. Naturally, the sculptor Herbert Haseltine came immediately to mind. He created the magnificent bronze of Man O' War that stands atop that great horse's grave at the Kentucky Horse Park. But then it clicked. Not far from the University of Chicago, my alma mater and employer, is a statue of a sleeping fawn by Elizabeth Haseltine. I pass it regularly while walking or cycling on the lakefront path in nice weather, and I remember being curious a few years ago to find out if she was related to Herbert (as best I can tell, she was not). 

Haseltine's fawn a top the David Wallach Fountain at 
Promontory Point in Hyde Park, Chicago

Elizabeth Haseltine was a remarkable sculptor known for her exquisite animals. The Chicago Tribune's art critic described her work as "delicate, true, simple, and fascinating." (2) Elizabeth studied and later taught at the University of Chicago and worked closely with fellow artist Lorado Taft at his famed Midway Studio on campus. It's a five minute walk from my office, and it's happily still in use as an art space. Elizabeth also then took a teaching position at the Art Institute of Chicago downtown, and I think it's quite probable that Hess was one of her art students. I'm sure she must have given him the pages of the animal anatomy book while he took her classes.

I could write a whole post just about Haseltine and Taft and how their work has been in the background of my everyday life for the last 25 years, but that's probably more navel-gazing than anyone really cares for. Suffice it to say, the work of Haseltine and Taft can be found around the university and in many places elsewhere in the city as well. They are two of the most significant and influential sculptors in Chicago history, so that should give some perspective as to the importance of the artistic tradition that Hess trained up in. 

Hess was not a horse person per se when he began his career with Breyer although he had obviously studied animal anatomy with Haseltine. After leaving the Art Institute, he worked as a commercial artist, a wood carver, and a designer of decorative architectural elements for buildings before serving in the Navy during World War II. When he returned home to Chicago, his talents eventually led him to mold making and a career with the Breyer Molding Company in 1950. (3) Hess sculpted the Breyer Western Horse, their very first model horse, and tooled the mold for it as well. (4) I love this quote from a recent article by Jocelyn Cote that Breyer posted about Chris Hess' work for them:

"Chris had a unique perspective that no other Breyer artist in history has had – not only was he a sculptor, but he was also Breyer’s main tooling engineer. Working alongside two other craftsmen, Paul Olson and Gordon Johnson, they created the injection molds (referred to shorthand as “tools”) from which all Breyer models created on those original sculptures have sprung. The tool that molded your 75th Anniversary Western Horse model, for example, is the very same tool engineered by Chris and his team all those years ago – and that same tool also molded the original palomino #57 models that adorned the Mastercrafters clocks. When you hold any model sculpted by Chris Hess in your hands, you are quite literally touching Breyer history." (5)

That gives me goosebumps. It's so remarkable that the original tooling not only still exists but also still works after 75 years. It's also incredible to me that Hess not only was an excellent sculptor, but he also had the engineering skills to design and tool the molds to cast his work. 

Hess' earliest designs for Breyer were technically copies of pieces produced by other companies---the Western Horse and Pony were derived from the Hartland Victor, and the Boxer was a direct copy molded from the porcelain Boehm Boxer. By the mid-1950s however, Hess began to create sculptures that were entirely his own. One of the earliest of these was Lassie, the beloved TV show Collie. Amongst the papers left with Stone were four promotional photos of the real dog, including this one bearing sculpting notes in Hess' hand.

While the archive of Hess papers held by the Stone company is in no way the entirety of his inspirational source materials, it is full of fascinating gems. He kept examples of work by other prominent equine artists such as Marilyn Newmark and Jeanne Mellin Herrick.

There were also a number of images of lynxes, both photos and sketches by another artist. I would guess they were part of a group of references Hess used for the wildlife series he created independently of Breyer in the 1980s. I'll share a couple of those images here, but I will definitely need to write a whole post about the wildlife series to do it all justice.

The most interesting papers are of course the ones related to Breyer designs. The majority of the pages are photos that Hess worked from to create his sculptures. As you'll see, he had an incredible gift for translating a 2D image into a highly accurate 3D sculpture. One of the earliest photos in the collection is this handsome Morgan horse. While Hess' Stretch Morgan mold wasn't an exact replica, this photo certainly influenced the pose and possibly the markings. 

The next image was that of a black Angus bull. He should look familiar. I love all of the sculpting notations. 

There are a number of reference pages for the real Andalusian horses Hess used as references for Legionario III and the Classic Andalusian Family. (I will probably break this out into another post about the Garrison Ranch and their horses eventually.) Once again, Hess' notes on these pages absolutely give me goosebumps. 

The reference for Legionario's pose

The source for the Classic Andalusian Mare---the pose and the 
flow of the mane and tail were captured pretty perfectly by Hess

An article about Galiceño ponies includes a photo that likely inspired Hess' pony. 

This quadruple exposed photo shows US Equestrian Team and dressage champion Keen performing the half-pass. While Hess ultimately sculpted Keen in a cantering pose, it's fun to see his references all the same. 

There were also two similar photos of the great pacer Dan Patch. Breyer ultimately released him on the Pacer mold in 1990, but I can't help but wonder if a standing model was considered, possibly before Adios was released. 

The archive also contained a photo of Phar Lap torn from a 1984 issue of the Blood-Horse as well as a movie still from the 1983 movie about the champion racehorse. Hess' sculpture of the Red Terror was sculpted in a different phase of the gallop so it could stand, and it was released in 1985. While he had already engineered two smaller models, the classic scale Hobo and Polo Pony, to balance on one leg in a base, both were prone to warping, and duplicating the pose in the famous photo below was not something Breyer would be able to tackle successfully for another 20 years.

According to Peter Stone, Hess worked primarily from photos (and sometimes illustrations), and he rarely visited his subjects in person. So I was really excited to find a few of his sketches amongst the photos. There were several of wood barns that collectors will recognize as releases from the late 1970s and early 1980s. 

But the real gem was this sketch of Stud Spider, actor James Brolin's champion racing Appaloosa. It's always fascinating to me to see another artist's process, so Hess' notes about corrections for his in process sculpture are fascinating.

Hess may not have been a horseman when he started working for Breyer, but he certainly developed an eye for equine anatomy and the distinctions between breeds from Shetland Ponies to Belgians to Thoroughbreds and everything in between. In the years since his death, more horse-oriented artists have taken up the reins and have sculpted more anatomically correct models for the Breyer line, but there is no denying the timeless appeal of Hess' work. Models like Lady Phase, the Clydesdale Mare, Adios, the walking Shire, and the Cantering Welsh Pony remain fan favorites even though they're all around 50 years old now. I personally love the classic scale Black Stallion Returns set and the all of the Little Bits molds. They were some of my childhood favorites, and I still have a huge soft spot for them.

There are more interesting papers from the years after Chris passed that tell some of Peter Stone's story, some early BreyerFest tidbits, and his new venture at the helm of Stone Horses. I'll share those in a subsequent post since this one is already quite long. 

I also plan to start revamping my Model Horse History site in the next few weeks so I can start uploading the many model horse references I've collected over the years, including these from Chris Hess' collection (and more). I strongly feel that our collective hobby knowledge and resources should be shared freely. Making them available to all hobbyists is the best way we can learn and preserve our hobby's history.

As always, thanks for reading!


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1) Quoted from a transcription of a flier given out to attendees of the first Peter Stone company breakfast held during BreyerFest 1997, https://breyerhistorydiva.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-chris-hess-flier.html

2) https://www.hydeparkhistory.org/blog/hyde-park-stories-david-wallach-fountain

(3) Young, Nancy Atkinson. Breyer Molds and Models: Horses, Riders, and Animals 1950-1997. (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing Ltd, 1999), pg. 334.

4) https://www.breyerhorses.com/blogs/collecting/chris-hess-the-soul-of-breyer-animal-creations?srsltid=AfmBOop3umhPuns8ApwBpMuVnjCHNePvoI4A2MArstBeWaDFZs2ATaF5

5) Ibid