Bronze Hare Sculptures – beautiful limited edition gifts lovingly created by British craftsmen

For lovers of Hares and other wildlife, the gift of a beautifully hand made bronze hare is hard to beat.  Arriving in a beautifully crafted gift box, each of our hand made bronze hares is individually numbered and bears the artist’s signature and is designed to be a real event when opened by the lucky recipient.

Each sculpture is created entirely by hand in a British foundry and takes two weeks to make.  Once complete, it is assigned it’s unique edition number as one of an edition of just 250 castings and carefully packed into one of our hand made gift boxes.  The accompanying certificate is printed by hand in Hampshire and the artist’s signature is your guarantee that yours is an original casting of Sue Maclaurin’s original sculpture that she has personally approved.

Sue Maclaurin has spent a great deal of her time observing hares in their natural habitat. The hare is steeped in folklore and mystery and have appeared in art and building adornment around the world for thousands of years. Sue’s hare sculptures in classic poses are a fitting testament to an animal that is revered by so many.

Selecting the perfect gift

If you are looking to buy a hare for a collector, either as a first purchase or in order to expand their collection, please do give us a call or send us an email if you would like to chat about which one to choose.  We have lots of experience in choosing the perfect sculpture, taking into account the taste of the recipient, so we are more than happy to discuss this with you.

The Hare in Mythology

The hare has been a powerful symbol in mythology in major civilisations around the world for thousands of years and has always had divine associations. Its elusiveness and unusual behaviour, particularly at night, have reinforced its reputation as a magical creature.

Throughout the world, there are long-spoken tales of hares; from the Americas to the Far East, from Africa to Europe, the hare is embedded in the folk myths of our ancestors. It is associated in mythology with the Moon, the celestial skies and the Sun, with fertility, the dawn, cunning and bravery. The hare was believed to have mystical links to the female cycle and to the moon which governed it. There is evidence of hare mythology in ancient pottery, coins, seals, hieroglyphs and in oral history.

The most striking thing about the mythology of hares is the degree of commonality across the globe. Similar to the fact that most ancient cultures have a flood myth, most also seem to have hare mythology.

What was it about the hare which led to this uniform mythology? We will probably never know for sure, but the fact that wild hares lived in proximity to people, perform unique and uninhibited courtship dances, are extremely sexually active in the spring and are active at night, were all factors.

The Hare in Europe

Man has for centuries respected, even feared, the hare because of its perceived powers of solitude and remoteness. Active at night, symbolic of the intuitive, and the fickleness of the Moon, the hare was an emblem of unpredictability. Like the Moon, which always changes places in the sky, hares were full of mystery and contradictions. The moon was perhaps the most powerful symbol of birth, growth, reproduction, death and rebirth. The hare was endowed with similar earth-bound powers.

Many European gods and goddesses are associated with hares:
Hittavainen (or Hittauanin) is the Karelian god of hares and hare-hunting

• The hare is often depicted as a companion to Cupid and as an attribute of Aphrodite/Venus, being associated with fertility and love
• Holda (or Herke, Harfer) of Teutonic mythology, was followed by a train of hares carrying torches
• The Norse goddess Freyja had hare attendants
• In Britain the hare was sacred to the moon goddess Andraste
• The hare is associated with the Celtic goddess Cerridwen
• Kaltes is a Moon goddess venerated by the Ugric people of western Siberia. She was a shape-shifter and often manifested as a hare

The hare was sacred in many ancient European traditions which associate it with moon deities and the deities of the hunt. In earliest times killing and eating the hare was taboo. In Kerry, Ireland, it is said that eating a hare was like eating your grandmother. This restriction was lifted at Beltane (Celts) and the festival of Ostara (Anglo-Saxons), when a ritual hare-hunt would take place.

The Easter Bunny

In his book 'The Sacred Ring', Michael Howard explains that in Saxon times the Goddess Oestara or Eostre (The Hare Goddess) was said to rule over the spring and the dawn and was often depticted with a hare’s head or ears. The gestation period of a hare is 28 days which is comparable with the moon’s monthly cycle and a woman’s fertility cycle, which is governed by the hormone oestrogen.

Oestara is associatrd with the spring, fertility and resurrection and is a friend of all children. To amuse children, she once changed her pet bird into a hare, which went on to lay brightly coloured Cosmic Eggs, from which emerged all life. It is from Eostre that we get the festival of Easter which originally celebrated the coming of spring.

The date of Easter is tied to the Moon and the hare has strong lunar associations, therefore hare-hunting was a common Easter activity in England. Remnants of these rituals still exist, the Hallaton Hare Pie Scramble still goes on in Leicestershire on Easter Monday.

When Christianity arrived in Europe, the Oestra festival was adopted to become a Christian one, leaving its pagan concepts behind and the faithful instead began to celebrate ‘Easter’.

The symbols of the pagan festival were transformed into Christian icons, the 'hare of Eostre' became the 'Easter Bunny' and the 'Cosmic Egg' that it laid became the Easter egg. In pagan times, special cakes were baked as sacrificial offerings to the moon goddess and were marked with an equal-armed cross to divide the cake into four quarters. These represented the four lunar quarters and the cake was broken up into pieces and buried at the nearest crossroads as an offering. That cake has turned into the 'hot cross bun' we know today and the cross upon it now represents the cross of Christ instead of the four lunar quarters.

Boxing Hares

The hare has long been associated with madness, especially during the mating season when the animals can be seen boxing or leaping in the air. Contrary to popular belief, the boxing hares are not two males battling for dominance, but actually the reluctant female fending off the unwanted attentions of an overexcited male.

 'Mad as a March Hare' has become a common phrase over the past few hundred years and was celebrated in the character of the Mad March Hare in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

The Moon Gazing Hare and Spring

The myth of the Moongazing hare in particular reflects ancient Pagan beliefs. The hare signifies the fertility of Spring, of new life as the sun returns to the earth. Light and dark are of equal length yet the light is growing stronger.

Pagans believed that seeing a moongazer would bring growth, re-birth, abundance, new beginnings and good fortune.

The Hare in Africa

Throughout Africa there is a myth that at the start of the world, the Moon was so pleased with the Earth that she wanted to give mankind the gift of immortality. The Moon sent her companion, Hare, to pass on the message: 'Just as the Moon dies and rises again so shall you.' But Hare confused the message and said instead: 'Just as the Moon dies and perishes, so shall you.' Earth's people believed these words and became mortal. When the Moon heard what Hare had done, she became so angry that she beat Hare with a stick and split his nose, but as they continue to live together, they have mended their friendship.

Fables are told across the African continent of the cleverness, deceit and triumph of the hare, called by various names according to the language. In West Africa the tale of The Pulling Contest and of Hare Goes Hunting With Hyena are well known. In Zambia, where Hare is called Kalulu, the following tales are still passed from generation to generation: Kalulu and Simba, and Kalulu Fools the Doctor. In Nigeria, the Hausa People tell the tale of The King of Beasts.

These tales were taken to America by slaves, where they joined the ancient myths of the Native North Americans.

North America

Hare myths occur amongst Native North Americans in their tales and totems.

Throughout Native American culture, the best-known mythical hero was Michabo or Great Manitou, the Great Hare. The tribes of western, eastern, northern and central North America all spoke of this beast as their common ancestor. The tribe which bore his name was looked up to with peculiar respect. Michabo was the ruler and guardian of all of the tribes and he was the founder of their religious rites, the inventor of picture-writing, the ruler of the weather, preserver of earth and heaven and the creator. He was also a mighty hunter. One of his footsteps was said to measure eight leagues and the Great Lakes were the beaver-dams he built. Sometimes it was said that he lived in the sky with his brother the Snow, or in a wigwam in the on a floe of ice in the Arctic Ocean.

This shows that Michabo was a personification of the Sun, in other words, a life-giving power. His name is compounded of michi, 'great', and wabos, which means both 'hare' and 'white'. Michabo is the Great White Hare, the God of the Dawn.

There is another North American Indian tale involving the young Cunning Hare, who was so hungry he caught fish in the river, but had no fire to cook it. Whilst stealing fire from humans, he was caught by the ears and almost eaten himself. But he escaped, albeit a little singed. It is said that this is the reason for the hare's black ear-tips.

The Hare in Egypt

The hare was also present in Egypt. In Egyptian mythology Osiris was sometimes called Wepuat or Un-nefer and portrayed with a hare's head. Osiris was sacrificed to the Nile each year in the form of a hare to guarantee the annual flooding that Egyptian agriculture (and indeed their entire society) depended upon. A minor Egyptian goddess named Unut or Wenet also had the head of a hare. There is a city that bears Wenet's name, meaning 'District of the Rabbit'. Its primary deity was Thoth. The hare is often depicted greeting the dawn, and he sometimes serves as messenger for the god Thoth.

On a more spiritual level, the hare could symbolise the very essence of life itself: the hieroglyphic 'Wn', depicting a hare on top of a single blue-green ripple means 'to exist'. Returning to the theme of the Moon, Pliny expressed the belief that the hare was androgynous and in Egypt this was depicted as the Moon being masculine when waxing and feminine when waning.

The Hare in China

In their book 'The Leaping Hare', George Ewart Evans and David Thomson point out that in early Chinese mythology the hare was a symbol for resurrection. In fact the Chinese don't refer to 'the man in the moon', they refer to 'the hare in the moon'. This hare in the moon is said to mix an elixir of immortality in a pestle and mortar. Figures of white hares were made for the celebration of the Moon festival. It is a yin animal, a guardian of wild animals. It comes from the North Pole bringing the greetings of the Moon goddess. In other Chinese writings a red hare appears with a Phoenix and a Unicorn, harbingers of peace and prosperity. Green jade hare amulets are made for good luck.

The Hare in India

Hindus also link the hare closely with the Moon and in fact they call the moon ‘Sasanka’, which means 'Marked with the Hare'.

This comes from a story told of the Buddha. In an early stage of his existence he was a hare, and when in company with an ape and a fox, he was approached by the god Indra, disguised as a beggar, who wanted to test their hospitality, so asked for some food. All went in search of it, Hare alone returning unsuccessful. However, so that his guest would not go hungry he had a fire built and cast himself into it for the guest's supper. In return, Indra rewarded him by a place in the Moon, where he can still be seen from the earth. Other Sanskrit and Cingalese tales mention the palace of the king of the hares on the face of the Moon. Many different Eastern cultures link the hare with the Moon and Buddhists have a saying about the 'shadow of the Hare in the moon' instead of the man in the Moon. They see the hare as a resurrection symbol.

The Hare in Ancient Rome

Because of its fertility (one doe can produce 42 young a year), the hare is an emblem of fertility, abundance, sexuality, lust, rampant growth and excess. It became the emblem of gods and goddesses such as Venus, Aphrodite, and Cupid. Philostratus said the most suitable sacrifice to Aphrodite was the hare as 'it possesses her gift of fertility in a superlative degree'. Pliny the Elder prescribed its meat as a cure for female sterility and reported that if you ate a hare your body would be sexually attractive for nine days. Hare's genitals were carried to prevent barrenness.

Ralph Whitlock, in his book 'In search of Lost Gods', suggests that the hare was an early Celtic form of divination. He reports that when Queen Boudicca was assembling her army to rise up against the occupying Romans in Britain, a hare shot out from under her cloak and fled in panic, leading her to believe that the Romans would be put to flight.