Two Shannon McKaig Saddles

 

Shannon McKaig was a tackmaker I was unfamiliar with until a friend surrendered a couple of her saddle sets to my tender mercies as a tack restorer.  (That was in February.)  Whether I did a good job is something only time will tell.  With many other pots a-boiling right before BreyerFest, somehow these captured my blogging attention-span.

It is only right and proper to start with some 'before' pictures. Here we see the natural set with its red suede seat.  Each Rio Rondo-kit saddle was a basketweave and was edged with silver lacing.

I'm calling the natural saddle the 'chestnut' one and the other, a dark brown and black, the 'chocolate.'  The chestnut had lacing all around, the chocolate only on the back skirt.

Although these pictures may seem innocent enough, look closer.  The silver lacing is inconsistent in width, is quite corroded and is missing in a few places.   Below is the real culprit:  the edging was coming clean off.  (A black felt lining is showing.)  I do hate it when an adhesive fails.

Thus I was faced with a difficult job:  How to polish, or else replace if that failed, the silver lacing itself;  and then, how to re-attach the coil to its edge?  Tertiarily I wanted to replace all the rings and hardware with stainless steel since there was ample proof they were turning green.

I'm afraid I didn't take any 'before' pictures of the chocolate set.  It had Rio Rondo conchos so deeply tarnished they looked black.  These were small handmade conchos available circa early 1990s, when Carol Williams was selling hardware she made herself.  The whole chocolate saddle was in better shape than the other.  I replaced every ring with stainless steel and polished and polished.  I coated the clean silver with top coat nail polish, which does not let oxygen through.  That was a trick.  And then I pulled out a horse and blanket from my own collection that set off the ensemble very well, I thought.

Above, birds eye view.  Below:  This horse, Matriarch / LaJewel, finished by Katie Richards, looks good with the simplified yet detailed braidwork on the bridle.

It is always fascinating to me to see how other tackmakers tackle the problem of model braidwork, in this case flat braid.  Shannon used a tried-and-true method:  She braided floss, wrapped it around the lace and glued down the ends.  What I don't remember seeing before is that she glued thread interweaves on top of it.  Such a clever approach mirrors the silver edge lacing in style.  Her eye for color was good.  Her glue for thread must have been very good, because it worked and has lasted.  Below is a view of the reverse or inner side of her work.  The purple arrow points to the other end of thread of that knot's interweave.

The chestnut saddle caused me the most problems.  Here is a pic I sent the owner, explaining my thinking.  The problem was that its silver lacing had aged to the point at which the lightest pressure (as for polishing) caused it to break apart and flake off.

In the end I chose to entirely replace the lacing with some sterling silver lace which I had.  After a great deal of struggle over method (we're talking multiple ideas), I gave up and used a white glue to re-attach the coil.  Embarrassing after my lifelong diatribe against glues and adhesives;  but nothing else worked.

Compare this shot with the second shot above.  What was a varied-width silver strip is now a constant;  what was corroded and grainy, with glue crumbs :(, is now clean silver.  

I re-used the same leather, in the spirit of retaining as much of the original tackmaker's work as I possibly could.  'Conserving' is the word.

 Here is the entire saddle after I finished.

 Unable to resist, I put Sassy / Tawny to work the same as LaJewel.  The two golden creations went together well.  The shot below makes her tail look big! leading to some creative photo cropping.  Note how the head has more space around it than the tail or off hind hoof.

In case you're wondering, that is my hair holding up the bit.  I'd cleaned off the bits and didn't want to dirty them again,...

.. and the horse steals the show.  'Twas ever thus with model tack.

One last portrait.

Tawny will be coming with me to BreyerFest, you may be sure.  And I will be looking for a companion, a palomino Stone ASB stallion, if I can find one...

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So what else is coming?  The Advanced Braidwork for the Model Horse is in the editing and polishing stage, and its working copy will be there for you to view.  The Plates are all drawn, the photos all taken, the text all written;  but changing the chapter order has resulted in having to re-letter and re-number half the book!  Plus digitization and proofing and signing and...  I'm so sorry, 'twill not be published by BreyerFest.  :(  August is my guess.  I will be taking names/emails for notification purposes.  The price will be around $27.00.  No preorders can be taken, but you can start saving, hah!

Sales horses abound, including Lafayette and Wells.  We have Mink enamel pins and stickers to sell!  As ever, check out a printed copy of the Guide to Making Model Horse Tack and purchase a digital copy for $13.99.  There's lots of stuff to give away, including my mother-in-law's collection of needlework samples and her DMC color catalogs, and some Tarzan cereal-box toys.  Scrapbooks and personal horses of course will be displayed.  Mostly I just want to say hi in person and show off the next book.

See you soon, Room 612!

A Jacquee Gillespie Hackamore

 

Many thanks to V. Norris for kindly helping me acquire this thrilling example from a master of model braiding.  I have written of Jacquee's work before now,  Braidwork by Jacquee Gillespie  but this is only the second piece of hers I've been able to snag.  I had commissioned a bridle by Jacquee back in 2018.  So it's been 7 years since I've had even a chance of obtaining one of her pieces.  That's typical for this great artist.

As my earlier article mentions, those fabulous cheek buckles are handmade in sterling silver by Jacquee.  She is a fine silversmith in miniature.  When the hackamore arrived the silver was much tarnished.  It's taken me a couple of days to polish it;  that was a real job.

Of course Sassy, called Tawny Gold in my herd, makes the photography into something more than typical.  Without apologizing, you're going to be seeing a lot of this girl.

Somehow she has a look of Colette Robertson about her.  Pert face!

 The slightest change of angle changes the look in the eye.  Compare the above with our opening picture.  Oh Stone, I gotta admit you've figured eyes very well.

 Except maybe here.  Does it look like there's something in her right eye?  Look closer:

 Detail is king.  You might think it's easy to shoot this horse.  Au contraire.  From one angle it's hard not to make her butt look too big;  that head really is small.

 And from the other angle, it's even harder to prevent that near fore from looking much too long.

 I'm doing what I can.  Zooming out helps.  Since this post is supposed to be about tack, here's a laid out view.

I discovered that this very hackamore had been featured on Jacquee's website.  Although I don't know exactly when it was made, my discovery then can date this hackamore to having been in existence in 2015.  

Photo by Jacquee Gillespie

As mentioned in the earlier post, Jacquee used dog and alpaca hair for her mecates.  This is an approach totally different from my own, yet it gives a texture ever-so-much closer to the real thing.  I'm afraid it also makes it harder to adjust and "play with" the hackamore.  Adjusting this piece (to fit Tawny) is what caused the kink in the reins, seen above.  It should smooth out with gentle use and time.

Close up:  The heel knot (black & white) is made with real horsehair.

 Notes from Afield:

I now have a rough estimate of when my next book will come out:  Sometime in August of this year.  Alas for BreyerFest!  but one cannot go faster than fate allows.  BFest attendees will have the opportunity to see my working copy, all printed out, which should be almost entirely finished.  I will also have horses for sale, as well as other items of interest: model horse-drawn vehicle wheels and items, assorted small HSOs, a couple dogs, and chinas such as Hagen Renaker.  See you soon!

Christmas in June

 

In the midst of bounteous June, turning into the homestretch of my 3-year next book and awash in other projects*, this hackamore was completed a couple days ago.   Since its initial inception was connected with Christmas on Mane Street, I call it the Christmas Hackamore.  Dig those colors!

 *(A new roof, bank research, jury duty for my husband, returning to hiking, canoeing and birding trips after a 2-month-plus-to-heal toe fracture {no running yet, there goes my perfect record of Breyer 5Ks}, & the new Stone horse & blogging about her.)

The bosal began life as a test for Fancy's chapter for the book, last winter.  I decided the thread used was too big and hard to find (and the nosebutton method wrong), and it went on to be finished as a separate bosal -- one of three such to be spawned by Fancy's chapter.  The first bosal used green and brown and was a gift for a friend.  The second, this one, used green, red and brown and is a gift for a friend.  The third bosal is still only a nosebutton at this time.

The colors of red and green were, of course, inspired by Christmas on Mane Street.  The fact that this piece was finished in JUNE tells you everything about how behind I am!!  However I am particularly proud of the design of this hackamore.  It is closely based on Dry's, whom see  Dry's Orange Hackamore  but instead of 3 colors [besides rawhide] it has four.  In fact it has five, unheard-of, accomplished by a pioneering feature:  the interweave thread for the white-&-green buttons is combined of two colors of thin thread, dark green and mint green.  I wanted an optical illusion of medium green when I didn't have it, and I got it, at the price of hand-spinning tiny thread.

You can just see the green-and-dark strand in the mecate below, next to the normal dark green.

 Speaking of the mecate, this one is unique.  Much of the work done on it was carried out while visiting the friend's house, a rare occasion itself.  Woven into its unusually rich palette of colors are all the memories of that visit.  The texture of the mecate shows that using one smaller-gauge thread along with 4 standard others could easily have been a big mistake.  But somehow I made it work.  It gave an interest and ripple to the rope that I'd not ever managed to do before.

When I sat down to photograph it on the mold it was made for -- same as Dry the Sea, or True North -- some perverse insistence claimed Lilly, my Dani [Danash's Northern Tempest] to be that horse.  You would think the combo of a brightly, if not brilliantly, colored hackamore on as loud a beast as that would be a clash.  Yes, it was a clash!  But I liked it that way!

And oh, the portraits she gave me!

All three portraits came out so well they barely need processing.   This is one photogenic horse.  I normally try not to accumulate molds;  I already had one True North;  but I am profoundly glad I was able to get one of these.  In my herd she is named Lilly Chinook, chinook being the-wind-that-melts-the-snow, which is just what she reminds me of.

The brow conchos were obtained from Alison Beniush's The World of Model Horse Collecting, an unfortunately under-utilized resource here at the TSII.  Hang in there Alison!  I'm coming!!   The crown buckle is a nickel-plated Rio Rondo cast, of which we only have a few;  it is nearly as rare as the hand-cut buckle on Dry's.  The 2-color braided ring was done for the Braided Rings plate part of my book.

As is now our standard, the popper has the year carved on one side and the initials TSII on the other.

 You might wonder why I didn't put this beautiful hackamore, newly minted -- all of the spring's frustrations, triumphs and sanity-breaks in it -- on my beautiful new mare, Sassy/Tawny.  The answer is that it doesn't fit her well.  Tawny's head is surprisingly small.  (Perhaps I should say Arabianly small.)   I did put Dry's Orange on her.  Despite my camera's distortion here, see how the forehead tassel is way over on the side, and how far up the bosal is on the muzzle.  The throatlatch end is below the bottom of the throat.  As for the length of his mecate, take my word:  it really is way too long.

 Doll by Anne Field of Field of Dolls.  Saddle by Erin Corbett (yes!).  The blanket is by me.

Although I have been striving very hard to focus on my now-massive book, "Advanced Braidwork for the Model Horse,"  it turns out I have to have a tack project on the side to keep me sane.  As the book's pieces became more complex and re-creating them became unnecessary (due to ground covered earlier), I turned to this hackamore.  No time was kept, but it has been worked on since December in fits and starts.   In an extraordinary manner, it is already paid for, even though it is a gift,... a story that will have to wait for future blog posts.  Until then, enjoy this Christmas in June.

 

The Spring Morn Puzzle

 

Ever since I learned how to search for things on eBay, I've been looking for this puzzle.  I know I said the same thing about the Copper Queen puzzle, but that one I found after about 10 years' hunting.  This one I've been hunting for what feels like my entire online life.  That would be since the late 90s, and here it is 2025.  By my math that can pass as roughly 30 years(!).  I tell you, the search had settled down to very occasional,... but it never really quit.

I had nothing to go on except memory.   I had worked this puzzle as a teen.  I had enjoyed it very much.  I remembered doing that great big green tree, and the peaceful stillness of it.  It was such an idyllic scene, and it had a horse in it.  You know girls and horses,...

Somewhere in my college years or shortly thereafter, I picked up a poster print of Spring Morn.  I don't remember the where or how, only that I had it when I got married in 1988.  When we bought a house together, the first thing I did was pin up posters everywhere.  This one went into the tack shop.  It's been there ever since.

 The print gave me the name of the artist and the idea that the puzzle which I remembered had been taken from a larger picture.  No surprise with a circular puzzle, really.  But there was, in fact, a surprise to come.

 When I got good at online research, I eventually dug up information about Paul Detlefsen.  He is not unlike Maxfield Parrish in painting Americana, but of a later generation;  Parrish was born in 1870 and Detlefsen was born in Denmark in 1899.   Paul Detlefsen became famous for gentle farming scenes;  serenity was his trademark.

It wasn't until this phase of my search (2020) that I found out that my art print itself had been an abridgement.  To my delighted surprise I found an even larger picture.  I hadn't known about those trees across the river!  Oh the joys of online hunting!

 Ultimately I found two photos of this wonderful painting.  It is not one of his most common.   The careful viewer will detect that this second depiction is even wider than the first.

Maxfield Parrish may be famous for the intensity of his colors, but this print might give grounds for competition!

When I saw what I did on eBay that May day, I didn't even stop to save the pictures.  You may imagine my fingers flew and I bought it very fast.  The seller could've had a bad reputation for all I cared!  Some things just fall into place, pre-arranged, long since decided.  There are very few items I have been looking for as long as this puzzle.  A book or two, a certain model horse,...( though that without any hope of affording it, hah [it's a Decorator]),...  Honestly, at the moment, I can't come up with an equivalent.  (cue the laugh track....)  I got the pictures later.

Photo from the eBay listing.  I had never heard of this puzzle company, Saalfield.  There was a date at the bottom of the front cover: 1965.  The great age of the puzzle helps explain why I could not find it for so many years.

Working it again has been one of my most amazing puzzle experiences, akin to what I wrote about with Copper Queen, except the memories were much fainter.  Also, my husband George was working this puzzle with me and he did much more of it than I'd planned on.  We have done hundreds of puzzles since 2019 and we're good by now.  This one still managed to be unique in its radial cut -- no other puzzle I own has that -- and its soft though firm grip despite its extreme age.  Although the missing pieces were unexpected (the seller had said nothing about them), I was still so glad simply to have it that I decided they were minor.  After all I have other puzzles with missing pieces,... missing a lot more than 3.

 

Photo from eBay listing

I have many puzzles; but this one is a very special favorite.

Progress Report 6: Rinker's Hackamore

After nearly 3 years you can be forgiven for perhaps thinking this massive project would never be completed!  Yet as of May 18th, Rinker's chapter is done, the 7th of the 8 pieces.  His hackamore actually has 2 chapters, as both Fancy's and April's Hackamores had before him.  However, Fancy's and April's had their bosals split off,  while Rinker had his mecate split off.  In all honesty he should have had his bosal split off as well -- it was so long and complex, ultimately coming in at over 70 photographs and 3 Plates! -- but his mecate was even more long and complex.  You see, mecate-making isn't braiding at all, but miniature rope-making,...  Yes, Rinker's Hackamore has been quite a challenge for me.  When you count up that I've been working on it since the third week in February, you can see I'm actually speeding up.

At this point I can focus on what's left better than what's been done.  What's left is the last piece, Tissarn's Mechanical Hackamore;  also, there's the back cover, the front cover, the frontispiece, and a mass of what's euphemistically called "editing" and rewriting.  I'd call it bringing up to snuff.  As might be expected, the whole book has undergone considerable evolution over those 3 years.  An entire blog post, if not the book's introduction, might look into those changes.  Oh yes, and there's also digitizing and uploading!  but those are separate beasts.  

At the moment I'm drawing a sigh of relief and looking up from an all-absorbing but hard-fought grind, kind of like a bear emerging from a difficult hibernation.  Advertisement?  Sales?  How about a bosal for auction!?   Such a bosal you never did see:  Every millimeter of its making has been exhaustively documented and photographed, examined, described, drawn and preserved for posterity.  It's amazing how much psychic oomph is in that little thing.  Except that I'm keeping the original Rinker's bosal, of course;  this bosal is merely a copy.  That there will be untold copies in the future is something my mind thinks it knows while my heart cannot begin to comprehend such a thing.  At some point children must leave home and their parents know not their future.  

Rinker's headstall was comparitively easy to describe, given how much has already been covered in this not-done-yet book.  His bosal, however, was very new.  The first two bosals to be covered were 4 bight;  his was a 3, and that meant a lot of changes.  This was just the beginning!  Both sets of side buttons, upper and lower, were different from April's or Fancy's:  the upper were irregulars, which meant nearly a whole Plate just for themselves;  the lower sidebuttons were a new formula, again calling for a separate Plate.  Rinker's heel knot was also very new, being an 8P 5B instead of the more usual 7P 6B, which is easily raised from the Pineapple.  I had included this formula on an earlier Plate, then changed my mind;  then changed my mind again, and used it for his.  The changing-of-minds about various aspects of this project seemed to take larger swings and become more common as the book went on.  Even now I need to rewrite Fancy's chapter and take out complaints about enlargement of the nosebutton foundation:  What I was tempted to use for hers but fought against manfully (and windily excused myself for), I wound up using for his.

Interweaves are zigzags in braided buttons.  Well, this book has more than a few zigzags!

The book's methods of documenting tackmaking changed when it came to Rinker's bosal.  The 'ingredients,' as it were, and layout of the contents of each chapter, evolved.  In the beginning, there was no "list of ingredients" or materials for each piece;  there was much less coordination with what had gone before versus what was to come.  There was also a smaller list of what was to be included.  This is one place where the book has really shifted:  I am sorry to announce there will be, after all, no inclusion of edge-braiding, which I once promised.  Nor of braided medallions, nor of any kind of braiding on a Western saddle.  😞  The book must stick to its 8 pieces of headgear, and (aside from braided rings) they have no edge-braiding.  It's as much as I can do to squeeze in what's there-!!  The inclusion of all the asides, the galleries of pictures, and the Interlude -- which covers braided rings, hobbles, curb straps, braided connectors and other peoples' rawhide bridle parts -- is more than enough to make up for the lack.

The book has experienced misison creep on a larger-than-Trad scale.  I think you will not be disappointed with what it covers.  If you get through this, braided Western and even Peruvian will be quite within your grasp.  Every picture in this post will be in the book, ... (note the little numbers in some);  we're up to 300 as of this writing.  There's one more chapter to go.

 This is my Covid baby.  Yeah, yeah, way overdue and extremely late, like nearly all my tack projects;  like my FB reactions;  like my very life, it seems, sometimes.  Not Done Yet, even now!  But pause and celebrate one of its major milestones with me.  There's a light at the end of the tunnel and it isn't a train.