A family business is the building of wooden rocking horses, modelled after a traditional pattern, I used some artisit licence in improving the facial features and original pattern design to create our own unique style of rocking horse.  Created in compound custruction with mitered joints, each pony is hand painted by myself - and I love to watch their facial features come to life.  It is difficult when each is sold since so much time had gone into their construction they were almost like children to me.

While not my occupation, I have had to fall back on creating these rocking horses many times to help suppliment my income.  Each Autumn we produce about a dozen ponies for the Christmas market, and we build to custom orders (color & trim) throughout the year.  We were asked to recover an antique wood and aluminium rocking horse that had decayed from weather exposure, and to assure the customer's satisfaction I hunted down an exact image of the horse to recreate it's original facial features using original colors.  Having this ability to work with wood has brought me a great deal of satisfaction, and the restored pony brought great joy to my customer, which is all important to me.