Today's post will give you a closer introduction to one of my favourite models in my collection.
Let me introduce Athame:
Athame is an Animal Artistry Sabiha resin painted by Animal Artistry. I've mentioned her in some blog posts every now and then but here is her story.
I first laid eyes on the model back in early 2005 I believe. I saw a beautifully painted liver chestnut Sabiha at a fellow model horse collectors website and fell in love. The only problem for me was that it was a stallion. I really thought that Sabiha would make a wonderful arabian mare and what I didn't know by then was that I had seen one of the few stallion versions of the mold.
I did some more research and found the Animal Artistry website and from there I found out that Sabiha was produced as a mare and that she was still available. I decided then and there that I wanted her. I had found a beautiful example of a bay Sabiha in the Animal Artistry gallery and knew immediately that that's what I wanted (I'm normally not a huge fan of bay horses so when I fall for a bay horse I consider it very special).
I started to save all the money I got. I didn't have any particular income (except for a monthly allowance from my parents) which meant that it would take ALOT of time to save up for her. I did my best and tried to do extra chores and help out as much as possible to try and earn a few extra bucks. I did my best to stay away from any temptations (aka other models I would love to own) and it worked out quite well until I in 2006 found a Sucesion and Le Fire set that I'd been looking for for quite some time (Breyers were quite hard to come by in Sweden back then) and they had been recently retired so I just couldn't pass them up.
That purchase put my savings back a bit but I tried really, really hard and managed to save up enough money to buy here by fall 2006, which means that I saved well over a year to be able to get her. I got in touch with Donna of Animal Artistry, and she was a delight to work with. This was my first model horse buy outside of Sweden (and also my first purchase from someone other than a retailer) so I was unsure on pretty much anything regarding model horse purchases but Donna was very nice and understanding so the whole process went very smoothly.
My Sabiha resin arrived at December 22, 2006 and I couldn't be more happy with her. She was carefully packed and I unpacked her slowly and in awe of her beauty. She looked even better than I would've ever thought she would. I was so happy and probably walked on clouds for days.
At the time I was a big fan of the tv-series Charmed and that's were I got her name from. An Athame is ceremonial dagger with a double-edged blade. It's frequently used and mentioned in some episodes of the series and I always thought that the name sounded cool and for some reason I always imagined it on an arabian mare so when I got my Sabiha the name was just right.
Athame has been with me for several years now and she's been on liveshows and entered in photoshows several times. She's never won any of the bigger titles on liveshows (I think that her best results have been a few seconds and maybe even one or two firsts in her classes) but she's been excelling in photoshows with everything from first places to champion titles and Best In Show Reserve titles. I even think she actually managed to be Best In Show in one photoshow.
Unfortunately in 2012, she was in an accident when we were unpacking my car at a liveshow. The box she was in fell out of hands and she suffered a broken tail, her croup shattered at the base of her tail and both her ears was broken, of which one was completely shattered. I was devastated and had to leave her with the showholder who promised to do her best to restore her. Unfortunately it wasn't possible to fix her and keep her as she was so at the next show I went to she had gotten me an almost exact replica of my Athame, the only thing different is that the "new" Athame is a slightly darker shade but it doesn't matter, I still love her and she is just as gorgeous as ever.
So that's the story of my first resin and holy grail and to this day, one of my absolute favourite models of my collection.
Does any of your models have a special story?
Please share, I'd love to here about it!
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