The owner of Julip Originals, Laura Ibbitt, on fiddly feathers, hefty price-tags and making collectors smile
Like most pony-mad children, I was interested in anything horse-related. I always wanted a Julip model, but at the time I had a real pony and so all my spare Christmas money was spent on him. It wasn’t until 2005, as an adult, that I rediscovered them, purely by chance.
We were in Thame in Oxfordshire and there was a small box of them in the window of a charity shop. I instantly recognised them and so I bought them for the princely sum of £3.85. It was like opening a little Pandora’s box. It transported me back to my nine-year-old self who yearned for these models.
You can’t ever just have one Julip. My collection has grown and grown and I probably have in excess of 200 now. We have get-togethers called “shows”, where classes range from the prettiest mare to the best “scenes” made of Julips at work. But mostly it’s a social thing, where everyone can ooh and ahh over your collection.
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