Before River Peak Apothecary, Beardsgaard made some beard friends with the fellows at Merlin’s Beard. We liked the cut of our collective jibs, so we made some beard stuff together in a trilogy of scents: Odin, Gandalf and Claus named after the epic beards of vikings, wizards and Santa.
We built scents off of characters and ideas. Might as well make them In Real Life. And soon, Brian the Shop Artist will be illustrating these scenes in even more awesome detail.
Gandalf was a slightly more difficult model search than Odin. Big white beards aren’t too hard to find around here, but our wizard needed a truly epic one. We weren’t too hopeful in finding that in a dude who also had long, flowing white hair (not a lot of that among our clientele), but that’s what the wizard hood is for.
Kevin fit the bill wonderfully. He takes better care of his beard than even Beardsmith, and he is a huge animal lover. Which is good, because for this shoot we got a damn horse, which added quite the extra level of difficulty to the festivities.
One of the greatest things about being a barber is you get to know people from all walks of life. So when you need access to a Shadowfax look-alike, we knew just who to call. A client and local stablemaster who cares for many horses, a gorgeous dusty white stallion and show horse named Merlin included.
Now Merlin is only boarded at the stable, not owned by them, so we asked and his nice owners gave permission for him to participate, with the condition that he could have a bottle of beard oil for his tail. Oh no no no folks, we can do far better than that. How about an 18-oz bottle?
Duder tried to eat the cork (along with Kevin’s beard and parts of his costume – he was having a very munchy day, but he did not try to munch the dog, they’re friends), but now he’s going to smell fancier than ever.
The costume was handmade by Beardsmith’s amazing seamstress mom (not even for this occasion, this is something we just happened to have on hand), and the staff we special ordered from a company that makes LOTR licensed replica weaponry, which we’re going to need oh so much more of.
Out to the stables we went, where everything went remarkably according to plan for a bunch of whackadoos working with a live animal (he did poop in the middle of the shoot, which we then had to pointedly avoid stepping in) on such a windy day.
We want to profusely thank Merlin’s people, Andrew and everyone at Beau Cheval Farm, Kevin for all of the things we put him through, and all of the other folks that helped our weird plans come together. They tend to work out in the end.
Huzzah, two IRL shoots down! For Claus we’ll need snow of course (because you know we already have our Santa), and we are incredibly excited to bring the rest of the trilogy to life. Our jobs are so awesome sometimes.
From the Apothecary / Goodbye Paul Mitchell