The castle clip 2014 

The Castle Clip was the first major body creative venture and the one that doesn’t appear much online, however it played a critical role in the evolution of my creative clipping journey!

Completed back in 2014 , The clip was worn by traditional ‘mini—cob’ Freddy! What I find interesting is, people often say that they believed Freddy was a big horse, as its almost impossible to figure out his height from the photos, but in real life he is only 12.2hh! Although he appears much bigger in some of the images. Freddy was 5 years young at the time of clipping (2014), a green ride & drive cob with a soft heart and a keen eye for food!

Back to the clip; The Castle Clip was completely freehand & free-styled, as in, I did not map it out on paper first or sketch plans but I knew I loved everything medieval and Freddy was the perfect medieval candidate, with his black coat and white features. Which leads me to my next point, the horse always has a part to play in the design process. I am inspired by each individual horse, by their coat texture, their colour, their breed characteristics – all of it.

The Castle Clip consists of a ‘JMC Coat of Arms’ – my initial clipping business name was JMC, which swiftly changed as my business grew and I developed The Horse Barber Brand, ahead of my journey onto America and my desire to bring a higher professionalism to the industry I love so much. The name change was a huge turning point for the business and we played a crucial role in the rise of bringing professionalism and awareness to the horse clipping industry & clipping practices, both traditional & creative. The Castle clip was a huge experiment for me and I swapped blades and tools, albeit I had quite a minimal collection of tools, I did the best with what I had and its something I often say to people when they begin their horse clipping journey, don’t worry about having all the equipment, lets work with what you have and build from their, every blade and every clipper can teach you something new. Sometimes it teaches you what NOT to use, and that my friends, is just as important and knowing what is BEST to use.