HIGH NOON SHOW, PHOENIX, ARIZONA, A FEW YEARS AGO … The dealer had a saddle for sale that may have been 80 years old. It was a cowboy rig, plain, unmarked, and well worn. The one thing I remember most about this nondescript saddle was the stitching. It was sewn with linen thread at ten […]
TCAA 2017
I’m headed off in the morning to meet up with a great group of cowboy craftsmen/artists who bring their A game every year to the show in Oklahoma City. I’ll also be meeting up with this saddle. This saddle was designed and built in honor of all the brave, horseback women who get it done […]
Shaped on an Anvil
Richard Tschirley stood straight for a man in his eighties although he was nearly blind without the thick, black framed glasses he wore. We sat visiting in the front room of the small home he and his wife of many years lived. I had become reacquainted with them after moving to Spokane to attend school. […]
Ray Holes Saddle Butter
When I worked in a saddle shop in Bozeman, Montana (1983), I became acquainted with a boot/shoe repairman by the name of Howard Pfaff. He loaned me his mare for a team roping that summer, but the thing I remember most about knowing him was something he said. He sold boots as well as having […]
Morgan McArthur
I first met Morgan McArthur DVM in 1984. He was a fairly new graduate of vet school and working with a couple other guys in a clinic in Idaho Falls, Idaho. He was gregarious, witty, smart, and perhaps even a bit intimidating to some. I was living about 2.5 hours away in Salmon, Idaho at […]
Hot Wax
Back in 2009, Pedro Pedrini and I spent some time with veteran saddler/leatherworker Jean Luc Parisot in France. One of the most interesting things I learned from him was the traditional method of edge finishing using beeswax and an edge iron. Jean Luc softened a cake of wax with a small propane burner, and then […]
Strength and Weakness
Tim is an attorney from Boston for whom I’ve done work for over the years. We talk on the phone occasionally about horses, saddles, and life. I consider him a thoughtful friend. Yesterday he was asking about building another pair of chaps…’says he’s got a new horse that he wants to show this summer. I […]
The Whole Cloth Method
We hosted a floral design/carving class on April 15 & 16 this spring. It was a jamb-packed two days with a larger class than usual…this one more than filled up as soon as I announced it. We started out the first day showing how to ‘gesture draw’. This is a technique I learned from our […]
The Barn That August Built
Heinrich August Wolters (b. 1870) raised a barn very near the place that I would one day be raised as well. The year was 1930, not long after the Great Crash of ’29, but hay had to be stored, teams harnessed, and cows milked. Though the near future looked bleak, there was a family to […]
Disentangled
I hadn’t seen Ray for several years when I ran into him at a horse sale. As we got caught up on each other’s lives, he reminded me of a day years ago when he and I were gathering cattle. Riding across a grassy meadow, we happened upon a friend of mine who had been […]
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