Oriental horse

Country: Spain

Manufactory: Lladro

Date of establishment: 1971

Sculptor: Salvador Furió

Size (cm): 65*74

Limited Series

Porcelain Story

What a nice horse!.. There are two of them in our collection, by the way. Not exactly the same, of course. But they are very similar to one another. It's just that the second one is a little smaller, literally a few centimeters. But, since it was released already in the early 2000s, new modern technologies have made it brighter and more sophisticated, or something. But let's talk about the first one, about this one.

I first saw it in Brussels. Moreover, not even in porcelain, but on ... tapestry. However, let's do it right. On an excursion to the capital of Belgium, we came with my wife and our son Dima, because Andryusha was still too small for such trips, and Anya had not yet been born at all. We were then going to decorate a large room in our house with a beautiful tapestry. And since Belgian tapestries are considered one of the most beautiful, we decided to combine business with pleasure.

In the first half of each day of our stay in Brussels, we devoted to visiting various historical and other memorable places, and in the late afternoon we went in search of the treasured tapestry. We reviewed probably thousands of different tapestries in total. Some of them did not suit us because of the overly simple plot, others were somehow too bright, even luridly vulgar. And the third, on the contrary, attracted by the plot, size and price (which was also important), turned out to be somewhat pale and therefore seemed inexpressive.

Most of the time we spent in one old semi-basement store, which, by the way, was located a few dozen meters from the famous ''Manneken Pis''. Our little non-pissing boy is already tired, waiting for his parents to choose something. And waited. The tapestry we finally acquired depicted the eve of an assault on an ancient French castle by cavalry - a classic story often found on the canvases of European painters. The tapestry was accompanied by an official certificate stating that it is an exact copy of the same, only made by old Belgian masters and now stored in the Louvre. By the way, we later visited the Louvre more than once, but we never saw such a tapestry there. But when, many years later, on one of the American ''porcelain'' sites, I met our today's oriental horse, the plot depicted on the Belgian tapestry immediately popped up in my memory.

It was exactly the horse on which the warlike leader of the cavalry was sitting! Everything was finally cleared up when the oriental horse I had acquired completed its long journey and took up a position right in front of the tapestry hung on the wall. Its expensive attire, posture, even that raised left front leg and short tail - everything was exactly the same as on the tapestry behind him! Since then, they have long coexisted in our large room - an oriental horse created by the hands of Spanish masters, and a Belgian tapestry depicting a picture of a French battle. Until the horse moved to the museum...