Featured Old cast iron horse - door stop? Adubon print old/real?

I found these 2 pieces at a local thrift store today & wanted to check with you to see what you thought of them before I put them in my estate sale tomorrow & Sunday!

The first is a very HEAVY horse statue. It has pitting that made me thjnk it could be really old (as well as the face up close), but it also has the older slot screws on the bottom - one on each foot/hoof.
Is it a door stop? Bookend?
How old is it?

The 2nd one is a Adubon print of a Spoonbill bird. Is there any way to tell how old it is/if it's an original?
I'm wondering because there are 2 spots that were torn & taped together before putting it behind glass?
And the back cover - I first thought it was a copper plate of the art in the thrift store but in the sun, maybe it'd been glued to something?

Any help or thoughts would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you!

 

I really like that horse a lot,it looks old/antique to me. I would have kept that. It looks like a 70’s or so print to me. More knowledgeable members will know better than me.

 

Thank you - I still have it!

 

I don’t know the size of the horse,but also it looks like ‘overkill’ for a mere doorstop to me. But really wait for the more knowledgeable members.

 

Sorry, it measures 7" length x 8" height x 3" Wide- it's the weight of it that made me think door stop.
This is another piece I also got today- it measures 14.5" x 11" x 4" - and the smaller one feels like it weighs 3x as much as the larger one.
One question - the larger one looks like bronze to me but it has 2 hole on the underside of its stomach. I tried to research it myself & the only thing I found with 2 holes mentioned was the Lost Wax way of making a statue/sculpture- is that what the 2 holes mean? (Under a felt base it has what kinda looks like wax? (See last photos)
It also has many designs on the top of the base, but I can't find a signature - is this factory art?
Thank you

 

@journeymagazine The left side of the spoonbill print has been cropped. I believe it would be a reproduction, possibly that was printed that way, or somebody cut off the side later. Here is an image from the National Gallery of Art giving dimensions of the original: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.32462.html

Also, the deterioration on the print looks odd (appears to have cracquelure)... so it was probably printed in a different manner than an original would have been. Just a guess on that last part.

I like the horses! But have no information on them.

 

Judging from the color of the metal and the corrosion, the first horse looks like bronze (or some other copper alloy), not cast iron. It may be a solid casting, which is why it is heavier.

The second also looks like a copper alloy, possibly patinated brass, and is a hollow casting. Here is a similar one illustrated on a site selling handicrafts made in India -


https://rugsindia.com/handicraft/

India has a long tradition of making complex figures using the "lost wax" technique, and this horse may have been made the same way. It looks like the horse and the base are cast as one piece (in other words, the horse was not made and then attached to the base). The figure would probably have been cast upside down, with molten metal poured into the large base area and flowing down into the mold through the legs of the horse. It would have been tricky to get the metal to flow up into the raised leg, and there may be evidence that this leg was made and attached separately.

The holes would have served several purposes - they would have allowed molten wax to flow out during the process of making the mold; allow gases to escape during the process of filling the mold with molten metal; and a means of extracting the core material that was probably used to make the casting hollow.

Here is a basic description of the lost wax method (written for another recent thread) -
Unless the casting is intended to be solid, a wax model of the final figure is built over a core, which is made of heat resistant materials such as a combination of clay, sand and straw. The wax model is then covered with a layer of fine clay that will pick up the detail, followed by more layers of heavier clay mixtures. Small pins may be inserted through the layers into the core to hold it in place. The mold is allowed to dry, and then it is heated to melt the wax, which flows out of an opening left for this purpose. The result is a mold with a core suspended in the middle, and a hollow space between the core and the outer shell in the shape of the model, into which molten metal can be poured.

Once the mold is removed, the cast object would be detailed and polished by hand.

Traditionally, lost wax casting produced a single, unique object. Once the wax model was melted out, it could not be exactly reproduced. But there is a more modern technique which allows many copies to be made by first casting wax models and their cores in reusable flexible molds. Once the wax model is created, the process of building the casting mold around it (also called the "investment") would be essentially the same.

 

Thank you , I was worried it was a "factory" piece because there was no signature.
Thanks again for the great info!

 

Thanks Figtree - I was hoping it was more than just a print because why would they try to fix 2 tears & frame it - maybe the left side was torn worse & had to be trimmed down?
But if a reg. copy or reprint why try to fix it as best they could & frame it?

 

Even if it was original, all of the damage done to it would make it practically worthless now anyway. I don't think it's original, but who knows? It probably doesn't matter, though, It is a nice picture but in poor shape. You could look at the measurements of the print in the link I sent before, and see if you can estimate if yours would have been those exact measurements if it hadn't been cut. If you're interested...

 

It is also faded. I see that what I thought was cracquelure on yours was actually the way it looks. I apologize. (See the bird's legs -- the legs on the original are a much richer pink.)

 

That's probably from my phone's camera!

 

Does anyone have any thoughts on the smaller, heavier horse?
It doesn't come up in a image search, so only 1 - or better because it's so old?
What should I call it?
Thanks everyone!

 

Can I call it a antique?