I made a rocking horse for Master Fruitcake The Elder (MFTE) in the late eighties when he was about four. He named it Rocky
We adopted Master Fruitcake The Younger (MFTY) when he was the same age in the early nineties, but he never showed any interest in his brother’s horse … until we visited the Rocking Horse shop near York.
He sat on one in the showroom and said, “Daddy will you buy this for me?”
I looked at the price tag, and blanched. It was a very, very high quality animal, but at £1750, was out of my price range, so I said, “No, but I’ll make you one”, which I completed much quicker than the time it took me to make his brother’s horse, especially as I had kept plywood templates and the jigs I had made for forming the swing-irons and bit, along with the gesso materials.
I only have a few photos, and none of the process.
He named it Harriet.
Around that time there was yet another round of redundancies at work, so I thought about making and selling horses myself if the worst happened.
Thankfully I kept my job, but I did make and sell one horse.
Here is MFTY helping me with that project.
Ready for final assembly.
Ready for sale.
Since I wasn’t going to keep it, it was never given a name, hence the thread title.