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Hi Miss Mel,
I’m curious to know something… what was the very first piece that “launched” the windstone line? was it one item in particular or several belonging to the same “family”? how long did it take for their popularity to kick in? when did you realize you had a going concern? and, out of your first sculpts that were offered to the public, which sold best and which was last to sell? how/where did you find suppliers for gypsum, paint, eyes, etc.?
thanks!
twindragonsmum
tdm
The little Hatching dragon is what started us rolling.
We had the line of regular animals, but they really didn’t sell all that well. We weren’t getting anywhere with this company until I did the little hatching dragon. It sold remarkably well, WAY outselling all the other animals.
Then I made the mother dragon, followed by the male dragon and we were off.None of the animals sold very well, maybe the bears and cats were the best of the bunch. The lamb sold the worst, so they are probably the rarest ( the black lambs rarer still!). I have never seen a lamb on ebay. The tigers are very rare too, but mostly because they were too hard to paint.
When we started in 1984 there were virtually NO western dragon figurines in the gift market other than pewter (which were the D&D figures) and the hand made ceramic ones carried by the craft co-op stores, so we kinda had the whole dragon market to ourselves for awhile.
Then the two Wizard sculptures went insane in popularity, I really don’t know why. Fads are really weird.John is the person who found (and finds) all of our suppliers. And John is a designer. He designed the production of almost everything in this shop.
He has been running a gift manufacturing company since he was 20 or so, (candles then leaded glass )… so he knew how to find suppliers, and how to design and build manufacturing equipment. If it wasn’t for his talent at this stuff Windstone would not exist.This is an opportunity for me to say something about Windstone.
I tend to get the credit, but I just do some of the sculpture! The vast majority of the work producing this stuff has been and is being done by others, such as our painters, mold makers, finishers, casters, scrapers and handy-persons of various kinds. And don’t forget the office staff… who like cookies…I hadn’t realized that you had so many animal sculptures to start with. I can see why all the fantasy sculpts took off for you. They are amazing! I wish I had the money and the space I’d own at least one set of all the familes you make,lol. Little did my husband realize what he did by buying me my first dragon. Hehehe 🙂 Oh to win the powerball!!!
LOL Melody, you are the Windstone Mascot. John sounds like an amazing business partner! (and husband too if hes stuck with you all this time)
I love all the old animals you’ve done. I only own the scratching dog (and one day one of those adorable ebay Lions!) I wonder why the Tiger didn’t sell very well? I know tigers are popular animals-not just here in the forum community but in the rest of the world too.
Have you ever thought about doing a numbered edition of production tigers? Like what was done with the wind wizard? Maybe make 1,000 or 500 of them and make them production pieces? I’d still love to have a Windstone wolf, but until (if) the molds get found, I’m not holding out hope.
I wonder if the little animals would sell any better now?
LOL Melody, you are the Windstone Mascot. John sounds like an amazing business partner! (and husband too if hes stuck with you all this time)
I love all the old animals you’ve done. I only own the scratching dog (and one day one of those adorable ebay Lions!) I wonder why the Tiger didn’t sell very well? I know tigers are popular animals-not just here in the forum community but in the rest of the world too.
Have you ever thought about doing a numbered edition of production tigers? Like what was done with the wind wizard? Maybe make 1,000 or 500 of them and make them production pieces? I’d still love to have a Windstone wolf, but until (if) the molds get found, I’m not holding out hope.
I wonder if the little animals would sell any better now?
The animals sell now, now that we don’t have any! If we had the tiger cub re-cast it would require making new molds from scratch so we probably won’t ever do that, but who knows.
I’m having the lions cast again in limited batches, because we found the original mold parts and the original master sculpture.We had forty or so of the Mother bear. These were original left-over castings from when we discontinued that sculpture. Since there were very few of the cubs left over to go with the mothers, I had a good sized batch of cubs newly cast. I haven’t painted them yet.
Oh my! I would love a cub to go with my mommy bear. Hopefully they wont come out until I have some extra money. I agree about liking the old animals. I love the owls and the razorback boars. I with I had bought one of each when they did the BIN ebay editions a few years back 🙁
Now that so many people have a fondness for Melody’s art, I think the old animals would sell like hotcakes. I’ve been on a hunt for a “licking cat” for the past couple years, I love his pose!
My mother used to own a gift shop and she would take me to the gift shows. I always picked up one of your brochures when I saw them. Then after I moved away from home, I found a store in the city that carried your line and would go in every time I had a chance. Then I started collecting them. But the one piece that just left me speechless when I saw it at the gift show for the first time was the Ruby Oriental Sun Dragon. I so nagged my mom to order your stuff. She did carry some of your pieces for a while but our town was pretty small and catered to mostly the tourist crowd, who expected more Beanie Babies and such.
And I would love a cub to go with my mommy bear!!
Now that so many people have a fondness for Melody’s art, I think the old animals would sell like hotcakes. I’ve been on a hunt for a “licking cat” for the past couple years, I love his pose!
I loved that licking cat too. He was sculpted from life, from the Alberti family cat “Fergus”, while he was lying on my bed.
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