|
FrontRangeLiving.com -> Home Design -> Happy Trails
 HAPPY TRAILS:
A HARDSCRABBLE LIFE YIELDS A COLORFUL STYLE
As any Colorado history text will tell you, life in the pioneer West was
dangerous, paltry and meager. How is it that out of this hardscrabble life came
one of the most colorful styles ever to be called American? Horse trappings
braided and woven. Sturdy spurs punched with filigree. Leather saddles tattooed
in florid swirls. Embroidered shirts, vividly dyed scarves, carved buckles,
fancy-stitched boots--Hollywood may have stretched the limits of outrageous
ornamentation, but the roots of flamboyance were always there.
The exaggerated portrait of the cowboy in the 1950s movies can’t explain
the steady following of Western style and taste. There’s another factor to be
considered. Colorado is studded with small horse farms--perhaps only
three acres of house, barn and corral in what could be called the last remnants
of the old West. While cars and planes have revolutionized transportation, the
romance of the horse lingers.
 Drive to northern Colorado, the home of Mark Howes, saddle maker, and you’ll
pass his corral of horses. One is lying on his back, wiggling with all legs in
the air, to scratch an itch. "There’s one old horse out there I really
like," Mark says, with a nod to the three. Mark’s DBH Saddles is a
workshop dedicated to handmade saddles fit to order and fancy as you like it.
Like many Westerners, Mark grew up with horses and learned to fix his own
saddles at an early age. He managed ranches in Wyoming before returning to his
Colorado home and setting up business. After 25 years, he’s made a reputation
for saddles in a craft that fits horse and rider nearly perfectly together.
 The
rest of this story is now contained in "Colorado Antique Lover's Guide" by
Front Range Living and Fulcrum Publishing. It can be purchased through www.fulcrum-books.com
or at bookstores, such as: www.tatteredcover.com,
www.barnesandnoble.com,
www.borders.com
or www.amazon.com.
|
