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Ooooooh,I had wondered about your siggies!! I love the large rock dragon that way. Olympia is gorgeous as well.
I have to have Nirvana take a pic of my tatoo. He matches colorwise. That’s why he had to come home with us.
You’ll have to tell the story of how you got him. I love the rock dragons but wish they had more color than the browns. I wonder if Melody has plans of someday doing them in other colors. I don’t plan on asking since I know she’s got a ton of projects going right now. It’s a nice thought though. I liked the red eyed little rock dragon I saw a while back as well. I think he had reddish-purple highlights. Not as impressive as your Phil, but hey, who is? 😀 That paint job must’ve taken awhile.
littleironhorse wrote:Well, I sort of think that Melody’s test paints also serve to promote the confusion, somewhat.
I mean, when there were only production colors, it was easy to say: “Oh yeah, that’s a Windstone Editions dragon by Melody Pena in peacock”. But with so many test colors, some of which differ only slightly, and even more coming out regularly, it’s getting more and more difficult to draw a line.
Again, I love all those test colors and could not be happier that Melody is offering them for sale. But I feel that the situation is not as clear cut as it once was.
Thats what the certificates are for. 😉
Nambroth wrote:Owch- I’m not going to touch this one again and will leave any further comment to Melody & John.
I will try to work through this again.
First, we have a photo record of all the custom and odd pieces we sell. We don’t have a way to identify repainted pieces which is a potential problem for us, and maybe for the sellers.
Second, I believe Breyer horses are hard to reproduce because of the type of plastic they are cast from and the type of molds required. Windstone pieces are easier to knock off so we end up chasing after smaller infringers. This is expensive and the return is not as great as suing a company that can afford to knock off a Breyer horse.
Third, the issue of what is and is not legal in the repainting of pieces is still a moving target. The paint schemes of Windstone pieces are protected by copyright and noticed by our copyright mark which covers both the sculpture and the paint. When you think about it, repainting of the pieces creates a misdesignation of copyright and, as a dual notice is not allowed (would be in itself confusing), creates confusion of origin and ownership. I think that a lot of these issues have not yet been tested in court, but that doesn’t make them legal.
Fourth, I don’t think that it is any body’s business to be speculating in a public forum about Jennifer’s relation to Windstone and if I were her I would feel that it is rather invasive of my privacy. For that reason I cannot comment further except to say that, so far, she is the only figurine painter other than Melody who is a Windstone artist. She is also a real jewel, who truly takes the interests of Windstone to heart and who’s talents and professionalism we deeply admire.
Fifth, if it wasn’t for all of you enthusiastic collectors I think we may well have voted to just pack it in and do something else. The forum has been a great way to connect and will surely give us new directions to pursue to revitalize the business. It has been an interesting social experiment as well and I don’t want to see it edited to death or stifled in any way so please feel free to get back to me with your comments on what I have missed addressing.
Last, we have had a constant, ongoing discussion as to how we can involve the collectors in Windstone without shooting at our feet and we really do appreciate your input. Just respect the fact that this is new territory for all of us and there are no easy answers to many of your, and our, concerns.
Thank you for taking the time to answer John! Hope the rest of your trip goes well! *big hugs!* We’ll have to make you guys a homecoming dinner or something! =P
Nirvanacat13 wrote:Thank you for taking the time to answer John! Hope the rest of your trip goes well! *big hugs!* We’ll have to make you guys a homecoming dinner or something! =P
YEAH!!
Well… I hate to keep this going… I know it’s a heated debate… but…
When Breyer started out in 1950 or so… they had no idea how the “hobby” of collecting “toy” model horses would take off. Before they knew it they had a nice community of collectors growing… avid collectors… and soon those collectors began to make changes to their model horses.
It started out simple… just repainting the models. And generally its EASY to tell when the horse has been modified. Initially the “customizer” was not concerned with hiding the brushstrokes from painting the horse. Nowadays… having visibile brush strokes on a horse you painted is almost taboo…
We customizers strive for realism… putting as much detail and life into the pieces as possible… and that is why this hobby has grown…
Individual artists can put WAY more time and life into a piece than a production line…
Also… for the longest time… ALL large Breyers (Traditional to Classic scale) were produced within the United States… so Knock-offs… though they DID occur…weren’t as common place as they are becoming. Since Breyer shifted their production to China… we’ve seen a LOT more molds be recast, resculpted… and just generally cheeply knocked off. And there’s not much that Breyer can do about it… because the laws in China are different than here… they don’t respect the copyright laws. And they are SO hard to track down. I know Breyer is currently fighting it… but I don’t see an end to that coming soon…
Heck… to begin with Breyer stole some molds from Hagen Renaker (a small company that produced china and porcelain horses, based in CA) and began producing them…
Hagen Renaker, of course, fought them over it… and eventually allowed Breyer to lease some of their molds to produce in plastic. This “truce” of sorts lasted until last year… when either Breyer chose nto to renew the lease on those “old molds” or… Hagen Renaker decided they didn’t want Breyer to lease them any more. Details are still sketchy on that…
But anyway… back to my original point… 😆
Breyer soon realised that they had a rather LARGE collectors market… and then this “Custom” horses… it drove their sales up… People wanted to buy horses just to customize… these customized horses were selling well on the secondary market… and every time people encountered them… it brought more people into the world of collecting model horses.
I don’t think there’s a customizer out there today who didn’t START collecting the “Original Finish” models…most still collect them, even if their focus (like me) is custom painting and selling them…
So Breyer decided that it was more profitable to encourage Customizing their horses (they even sell kits for this specific purpose… as well as tack and what not for them, for little kids and amateurs to get started on! it’s an entire product line for them!)… rather than spending the money to squash it and see that people didn’t do it.
If you think about it… it was a really smart move on their part.
I’m not saying that this is something Windstone should follow explicitly… or even at all… it’s just WHY Breyer doesn’t discourage it…
Honestly… I know it’s something Windstone can’t exactly stop…
In all honesty… the best thing to do is EDUCATE people about it… maybe not discourage it as such… but tell them that they prefer it not to happen… the reasons why… WHY it’s special to keep OOAK, LE and even production run Windstones as “special” and “collectable” as they are.
We all know that Melody’s artwork is beyond compare. ^.^ There just aren’t ANY fantasy figures out there that even come CLOSE to what she achieves!
It’s up to us as a collecting community to make sure that Custom painted pieces REMAIN identified as such… so there is NO confusion…
I’m honestly thinking that if I repaint any regular mold Windstones… I’ll find some way of permanently identifying it as a customized, OOAK piece… a signature carved into the bottom of the figure… or something to that nature… Cause we all know that no matter how many COAs, notes or ther ways of identifying the piece, that is separate from the piece… WILL be lost at some point… causing the current owner to be unsure of it’s origin…
But yeah… that’s just my $.02… 😀 😈
Oh! And another note… Nam’s pieces are beyong question. They aren’t “custom pieces”. Simply because she is a WINDSTONE EMPLOYEE… therefore they are OFFICIAL winstone pieces. They are just OOAK using a different method of production. 😀 Totally different beasties!
ladybrooklyn wrote:Well… I hate to keep this going… I know it’s a heated debate… but…
When Breyer started out in 1950 or so… they had no idea how the “hobby” of collecting “toy” model horses would take off. Before they knew it they had a nice community of collectors growing… avid collectors… and soon those collectors began to make changes to their model horses.
You have identified some significant differences between the Breyer horse situation and ours. Most important is that Windstone pieces started life as collectables and Breyers were marketed as toys. The value of the Windstone line will not necessarily be increased with the marketing of repainted pieces as was the case with Breyer. Our own custom pieces from the Windstone factory do revalue the line upwards, but I am not so sure that would be the case with many “loving hands at home” flooding Ebay with their work.
This is why we created the PYO pieces. They are a concept that will not devalue the line and, if all goes well, is intended to create an authorized arena for custom work.
I will restate the mold issue. You really can’t make a latex mold of a Breyer horse and reproduce anything like the original. We have a different set of issues.
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