April 23, 2008. It is with great pleasure that I present our latest saddle!!! and answer the question: What ever happened to Timaru Star II Saddle #446?
As you may recall, TSII #445 was the fabulous Braided & Citrines (at the moment not pictured) while TSII #447 was Eleanor's Hexagon Hot Fix, still to be seen below. When one adds on the evidence that our NAN Auction 2008 saddle is numbered TSII #448, logically the next set to be made, one does naturally wonder.
But this is it!!! positively finished, positively mine - oh - mine, and positively absolutely my favourite so far, if only for its charming wonkiness. I am not operating on anybody's sense of fashion but my own. This saddle has been made in a bubble of experimental artisanry. Its roots are many and its gestation long -- four years to be exact. If you perchance remember that I had a Sculpey saddle tree hanging about
with my Hobby Information Booth display at BreyerFest last year... well, this is what became of that saddle tree. Another tidbit of information to remember is that saddles here are numbered according to conception, not birth. Its design and planning came together before #447 was designed and begun. Yet #447, once started, gathered quite a head of steam, and had to be completed for many excellent reasons. Those reasons were all braided together, and included loyalty and friendship, seniority of waiting, eagerness to explore new materials, and the best old standby, fund-raising. A braided strand is stronger than one the same size not braided, and so #447 was finished first.
I am calling #446 the Peach Rose saddle. This is one of those rare cases where the blanket and the bridle came first, and the saddle was made with them in mind. The bridle came before all, by a long shot. It was made in the fall of 2004, inspired by Julia Harmon's braided-floss bridles with Hill Tribes silver beads. I was insanely proud of my Peach Rose bridle -
- it was a first in so many ways, with its color and material. The blanket followed, later that winter, and is identified with Shenandoah NP, where we vacationed. With these 2 pieces I was envisioning, even then, a natural-color Western saddle with white, dark brown and pink color accents -- to be made with the help of Keri Okie's "Tooling the Miniature Roper Saddle" booklet, which had also come out in 2004. Remember: new and different is fun...
Although I'm dreadfully greedy to thus make 2 pieces in 2008 for myself (the other is Tissarn's Mechanical Hackamore, seen on the Sneak Peeks page), I felt justified on grounds of the sheer number of successful experiments. There are a ton of "firsts" to this saddle. It is the first to contain a self-made saddle tree. It's the second TSII saddle to have a real tree at all (the first was #438, Buffalo Bill). It is the first to use another tackmaker's tooling patterns: this is Keri Okie's Poppy Garden II. Thus it is my first Western saddle based on Keri Okie's patterns and approaches. (My Keri Okie English Cutback was made in 2007.)
It's the first to have what I consider a true gullet, made with a tree yet still having my own wire-core horn, with wires connecting to the base plate (skirt), giving the strength and security I so desire in a Western saddle. The huge high gullet, very nearly oversize! can be explained psychologically: after years of tiny little cramped gullets I had pent up desire!! Those are pinheads in the gullet, further strengthening the attachment of the leather, and acting as the 'real' nails do in a real saddle.
Another first to #446 is its hot fixes or silver iron ons. I desperately needed a set of my own to keep tabs on and see how this method of silver aged and wore. The beautiful large scalloped conchos employ the simple idea of using hot fixes as silver blanks -- they are not in fact ironed on. The smaller conchos, again handstamped, such as the stirrups, are 'fixed.' The particular approach of placing tiny silverdots in the centers of tooled flowers I first saw on a full size holster, in a bootmaker's booth at Penn National Horse Show last fall. (Thank you Didi!) I can make no claims as to whether this is 'bling' or even 'fashionable;' all I know is I like it. It beautifully combines a 'touch of silver' with my need to test hot fixes; for once, I don't think it will be uncomfy to sit on!! This is the usual reason for the saddlers' and silversmiths' unbreakable rule: No Silver Where You Sit.
Yet another first to this Peach Rose saddle is its braidwork.
This is more familiar ground to us as a tackshop; nonetheless, I wanted to experiment "to the max" with braided trim. Our Elk saddle (#432) started down this path, but #446 takes it and runs. New and improved edge braiding resulted, which could be described as using the same slits for each color.
Furthermore I evolved a new and improved way of doing two-color braided rings (first used in the neck base ring), based on Spanish Edge Braiding of 1 loop. My method is NOT found in any braiding book that I have!! The closest is in Grant's Encyclopedia and he uses 1 color to loop the other color. But mine keeps the same color for each complete loop. I'm sure somebody has invented it somewhere, I just don't know who... it works beautifully in miniature, and can be seen here on the breastcollar center and the back cinch rings.
We all know that hybridization is a good thing. I just never guessed it would be QUITE so good. I am so pleased with this approach that I plan on using it for my NAN Auction saddle... its tree is already made. However, this same approach is fiendishly difficult! Every component, from the tree to the patterns to the silver, has to be made and fitted individually by hand. Basically it is re-inventing every part of the saddle for each saddle. It takes something of a sculptor as well as leather carver and silversmith... I confess to having real problems with symmetry. Trees cast in a mold would solve this. But that is something I am not at all ready for yet. At least for now, I am enjoying the "one-of-a-kind" results.
TSII #447: Eleanor's Hexagon Hot Fix.
March 26, 2008: Finished at last!! It has been nearly a year since we've finished a saddle of any type;
and nearly a year again before that one! Kudos to Eleanor Harvey and Heather Abounader for once again helping inspire a real trailbreaker of a piece, my first-ever hot fix Silver Parade Saddle! -- but surely not my last. You can blame my new truck in part: automatic after 30 years of stick shift (what ease and comfort!). Or you could just lay it at the feet of trying something new and fun (what ease and comfort!!). It is with the greatest pleasure that we proudly announce the EIGHTH major technology change in our way of making miniature silver parade saddles...something we've been doing for nearly 30 years.
Between 1978 and 2000 there were only two revolutions in how we made silver parade saddles. In the eight years since then, there have come another five; so who am I to say this is the last? A brief listing of the 7 would look like this: From 1978-ish to 1988, we tried stamped and painted leather. From 1988 to 2000, silver tape; silver tape (also called metal mending tape and plumber's tape; it is aluminum {Al} not silver {Ag}) is still used today, in congruence with other materials, but no longer by itself on leather. From 2000 to 2003, we combined silver tape with Mylar tinsel tying, as an enhancement and security attempt. In 2001, a single saddle was built with what I call sandwich technology, with the silver layer between two leather layers. From 2001 to 2003, several parade saddles were made with what I call formed spot technology. This came close to the way the real thing is made, and the next method came even closer. From 2004 to 2006, bonded aluminum was used.
A total of 5 TSII Silver Parade sets were built using it, and this material is seen today in the central panels and irregular plate shapes. For the seventh method, in 2007 we made one Parade saddle using a combination of real silver {Ag} and potmetal. The metal for the eighth is unknown, but it is real metal, probably aluminum. I don't have a formal name yet, so we'll have to go provisionally with the jewelry trade's term: hot fix. :)
Of course, that is a Unicorn Woman Corona Blanket. It was with difficulty I restrained myself to a purely black and silver color scheme; but I felt the "pure" form of the art of silver saddlery needed to be made real first, to prove it to myself -- and I have learned much! The neckpad spots are some of the few that are not stamped. Nearly all the spots you see on this saddle are stamped, in one form or another, to simulate the 'engraved' look. The pommel caps are not hot-fixes, but real metal (Aluminum) hand formed and pinned in place. The silver braiding, one of our trademarks, is done in Galaxy lace, even around the neck of the horn, which has got to be one of the most DIFFICULT places on the entire saddle! The seat is hand-fitted Ultra Suede, man made fabric that makes better leather than leather.
I had only a very short time to photograph this saddle -- one morning -- and likewise a short time to 'get to know it,' try it on different horses and get used to it, have the realization sink in that I'd finished something which had taken a solid month. So much for iron-ons saving time!! This is part of my excuse for not updating my page until now. The full account of its delivery and payment should perhaps be saved for another time and place, but I will say I got to visit Eleanor in downtown Washington DC at night in the rain, having never done such a thing before. Believe it or not, it was wonderful fun. Yes, there will be more saddles, but this one, the first of its kind and a huge step forward, deserves to be one of my greatest "Big Saddles."
(BEN-sum-uh) (TIM-uh-roo). My eBay name is timaru-star-ii. This page updated approximately every two to four months.