Loony for loons

I am a Minnesota girl born and raised. I haven't lived there for many years now, but I still consider it home. You can take the girl out of Minnesota after all, but you can never take Minnesota out of the girl. (Uffda!) Both sides of my family are from Minnesota, too, and have been for generations---since the early 1850s before Minnesota was even a state. I was born in Minneapolis and grew up in the suburbs in Chanhassen. (Yes, I did see Prince. His bodyguard was our next-door neighbor.) My family has mostly scattered to other parts of the country now, but my beautiful little corner of southeastern Minnesota will always be home to me, and I love it fiercely. 

Because of my abiding fondness for my home state and its many lakes (and because I love Maureen Love's birds as much as her horses), I have a small collection of Hagen-Renaker loons all sculpted by Maureen. Naturally, I had to have the #2006 Loon (Decoy) from the short-lived Miniature Stoneware line.* It was made from Spring 1988-1990, and it came in the matte finish typical of stoneware pieces. It measures 1.25 inches tall at the top of the head. Crisp early examples have the suggestion of carving marks, as if the piece really was a tiny wood-carved decoy. [1] 

#2006 Mini Stoneware Loon

Examples of the #2006 Loon were sold attached to little ceramic bases in Spring 1989 only. [2]

Stoneware is more time consuming to produce and more prone to losses than earthenware, so the line was discontinued at some point in 1990. The mold was then reissued in earthenware with a glossy finish as part of the Specialties line from Fall 1991-Fall 1993. Sold as "Loons on Golden Pond," the piece featured two loons, one with a baby on its back, serenely swimming across a rippling golden base, presumably one of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes at sunset. Or so I like to think anyway. This set was given the number #3034 in the mold book, and though the loon with the baby was never sold separately, it was assigned the number #3029. Both loons on the base have lovely green iridescent heads just like the real birds.

The Stoneware Loon sans base is still relatively easy to find, although prices on them have definitely crept upward in recent years. The Stoneware Loon on the ceramic base is quite a bit harder to find, and they come up for sale only rarely. The golden pond set has also become quite scarce, though they can be found with patience.

The rarest of the Hagen-Renaker loons, a Designer's Workshop scale piece, sadly never went into production. It dates to the 1980s, and while the mold was tested at San Marcos and slated for possible Fall 1986 production, the factory closed that same year at the end of the Spring season. [3] The DW Loon mold measures about 4.5 inches tall and was never assigned a number. One factory finished test is currently known, a glossy piece that was sold in 2015 from the Hagen-Renaker archive sale. My mom, sister, and I were determined to have it, and happily this gorgeous piece is now a treasured part of our collection. 

Unproduced DW Loon test

Unproduced DW Loon test

Models made at San Marcos were generally tested (and issued) in matte and glossy finishes, so more test loons, particularly a matte example, may exist. At least two custom glazed examples finished by Maureen Love are known as well as one by Laurilyn Burson. It is truly a spectacular work of sculpture and design, and I feel so very lucky to share this lovely loon with my mom and sister.

There is one more loon that bears mentioning, and while it's not a Hagen-Renaker piece, it was produced by a closely related pottery. Jim Renaker, son of Hagen-Renaker founders John and Maxine Renaker, owned the Loza Electrica pottery in Mexico that produced a variety of animal figurines, ornaments, and cartoon characters from about 1992-1998. While Jose Garcia was the sculptor of most of the Loza molds, the Loza Loon bears a striking resemblance to Maureen's unproduced DW design. It is suspected that she may in fact be the artist for this piece. Like both the Stoneware Loon and the DW piece, the Loza Loon has a subtly turned and slightly canted head. It measures about 2 inches tall, and is fairly difficult to find.

Loza Electrica Loon

Loza Electrica Loon

Size comparison between HR Stoneware Loon and Loza Loon

 

For anyone interested in learning more about the Hagen-Renaker San Marcos factory, please check out the latest video on the Hagen-Renaker Youtube channel. In it, Kristina Lucas of Hagen-Renaker Tennessee and longtime collector Heather Wells discuss Karen Grimm (of Black Horse Ranch) and her acquisition of the final inventory from San Marcos. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy-_zRjpMh0


For more in-depth information on the Miniature Stoneware line, "never mades" like the DW Loon, and more, I  highly recommend joining the Hagen-Renaker Collectors Club. The wealth of information contained in the newsletters alone is worth the annual cost---only $34! (Plus you also have the opportunity to order new HR models.)

I hope you have enjoyed this little descent into loon-acy with me. Stay salty, my friends!

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* Not to be confused with the unproduced A500 Stoneware line comprised of approximately DW sized pieces. I will probably cover that in an upcoming post. 

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Works Cited:

1) Hagen-Renaker Collectors Club newsletter, August 2022, HR Stoneware Series, Part 1: Begin With Birds, by Kristina Lucas

2) Ibid

3) As per a January 2026 text conversation with Kristina Lucas

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum

We're only just over two weeks into the new year, and as a podcaster I listen to said the other day, it feels more like a year than a scant fifteen days. The news cycle has been relentless and maddeningly full of gaslighting. I do try to keep this blog as upbeat as possible, so I'll save my rants for Facebook (or my sister), but suffice it to say, we are currently living through a strange and disturbing mix of Idiocracy, 1984, and The Handmaid's Tale. 

Highly relatable comic by Emily McGovern 

Ursula LeGuin wrote that "resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art---the art of words." Outside of voting and calling my representatives, I am but one woman with limited resources and power. But I can write, and even if I'm just writing about history and where model horses fall into that history, I will always do my best to share facts and the sources from which they came. Telling the truth and combating nonsense and conspiracy theories is just as important in our hobby as it is in the bigger world.  

So that said, the universe gave me a pretty solid shove over the holidays to get myself in gear and start devoting real time to all of the model horse history projects I want to do that have been languishing on mental back burners for too long. I already had vague plans of creative and self-improvement New Years resolutions for 2026, but a trip home to see my family a few weeks ago kick-started an exercise regimen and a serious Marie Kondo-style look at everything. A few days into my trip, a plumbing issue necessitated that we reevaluate the multitude of books in my parents' basement to make space for more important things (model horses) while the leak was addressed. My sister and I hauled 60 heavy paper-ream boxes of books out of the basement, sorted them, and donated the vast majority of them to local shelters and charities. We are determined to do the same with more stuff in the parental basement, but maybe at a less knee-wrecking pace. (Stairs + heavy boxes = sore for days.)

The surprise downsizing adventure while visiting my parents has inspired me reinforced my plans to declutter my own living space as well. Part of my reorganization plan involves new shelves (insert angelic choir noises here) where I can not only display more of my collection but also have some space to assess the models I plan to part with. (Do I really need 20 classic Kelso models? Probably not.) I also intend to devote a shelf or two to current custom projects so I can finally wrap up all of my commissions and take a break to paint some models for myself.

Bringing order to the material chaos will definitely help me bring some order to the mental chaos. I have a hard time doing creative things---writing, painting, coding websites, etc---when there is clutter distracting me from what I should be doing. Tidying up customizing bodies, books, reference materials, and knick knacks will be such a huge help. 

Which brings me to the aforementioned metaphysical kick in the pants. I am hoping to make this the year I finally get serious about updating my Model Horse History website. It's very HTML 1.0 at the moment, so that needs some aesthetic modernizing work, but more than anything, I really just want to create an encyclopedic database of model horses reference materials, both hobby published works and company produced ads, publications, etc, for everyone in the hobby to utilize. As I've said before, history should be shared, and I have a ridiculous amount of reference materials I've collected over the years that I need to digitize and upload. 

I'm also slowly working on an Identify Your Hartland site (with the blessings of the late Janice Cox, so that tells you how long I've been needing a cattle prod more encouragement to get a move-on.) I will definitely need to crowd source information and pictures for the site since my own Hartland collection is limited to a few specific interests. 

All of that will keep me quite busy without a doubt, but I also absolutely intend to spend time just doing creative things for my own peace of mind---painting models, messing around with water colors, and picking up long neglected cross stitch projects. Art and creativity are a source of self-care, of joy, and especially of a more zen mental space to combat the fear and despair. 

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.