Located in the beautiful countryside village of Shipshewana, Indiana, founders Peter Stone and Elaine Stone carries on a long standing tradition of faithfully recreating the beauty found in major horse breeds found in nature. With Shipshewana being well known across the Midwest as a regional center for craftsmen, artisans and artists of many disciplines within the field of arts and crafts. Founder Peter Stone has had a lifetime connection to crafting of model horses throughout his lifetime. Peter’s father, Sam Stone, was the founder of the first model horse company in America, circa 1950. Being ten years young at the time, model horses were the “stuff” of which dinner table talk and dreams of the future were made.
Based upon the Stone family’s passion for model horse making, Peter Stone and wife Elaine have continued in the Stone family tradition since that time. Peter and Elaine take great pride (and pleasure) ensuring that every model horse sculpture created is carefully handcrafted, hand painted and finely finished by an incredibly gifted team of carefully selected artists, artisans and craftsmen living and working in the Shipshewana area.
Fellowship among the craftsmen who carve, etch and sand increasingly wonderful horse body poses, then pass these fine works on to incredibly gifted artists who focus exclusively on recreating equine anatomy like no other group of artists in the world. Once the craftsmen and artists finish their respective creative tasks, a group of artisans then focus exclusively on the application of a proprietary finishing process that’s unmatched anywhere in the world.
In addition, Peter and Elaine regularly invite many famous equine artists who travel great distances just to work in this bucolic setting. Oftentimes, the lights in the painting studio burn into the wee hours of the night when many of these artists stretch their creative skills to the limit, seeking the perfection found in nature.
Stone Horses has therefore become well known as the “Left Bank” of the model horse world, being the place where live horses roam free, guiding our collective artistic and academic studies that are foundational to faithfully creating incredible horses.
The result? The finest model horse sculptures found anywhere in the world today.
Stone Horses sculptures are handcrafted using Cellulose Acetate Resins or other similar materials that provide a foundation that allows one of our artisans to carefully mold, shape or carve intricate horse body details. Cellulose Acetate Resins are the most common foundation used, as the use of Cellulose Acetate Resins results in extraordinary levels of detail, durability and long lasting quality.
The colors and designs of each model horse sculpture are each hand painted and can vary depending on the artistic goal for each horse. Some custom model horses are crafted from portraits of live animals using our exclusive Portrait Horse System, with photographs used to best replicate the color and markings of living horses. In other cases, model horse sculptures are often custom made based upon the vision of the collector using our equally exclusive Design-a-Horse System.
In addition to the foregoing, many collectible model horse figurines are inspired by carefully conceived artistic renderings crafted in decorator inspired color pallets, or in fantasy inspirations, (such as our well known Unicorn model horses). In other cases, Stone Horses often invites world reknown equine artists to create highly collectible Artist Editions, while regional artists working within the Stone Horses family concentrate of new releases limited and special edition model horses.
Once a given horse has been handcrafted, carved, etched, washed several times and then hand painted by an artist, each horse then receives a proprietary mix of finishing coatings that not only bring out the colors and details. As a result of the intense concentration on high quality craftsmenship and faithful artistic recreation of living horses, Stone Horses are highly sought after by collectors from all over the world who seek the highest quality model horse sculptures found anywhere on planet Earth.
For some, it is because of the limited number of high quality, handcrafted and artist painted special editions; For others, it is because Stone Horses proprietary finishing process is like no other found in the world of model horse sculptures; For almost everyone, it's because Stone Horses are always faithful artistic recreations of the lifelike horses portrayed; and, for Peter and Elaine Stone, it's because "We just never get tired of looking at them!".
To learn more about Stone Horses and our long standing tradition of handcrafting the finest model horse sculptures found in the world, please continue to explore our website, or just call or write with any questions you might have. We are pleased to both welcome and help you, our valued friends.
