IlluminousCorvid

I found this lovely old horse stashed away in an old leather shop in northern Oregon, and am lucky enough to get to play with it and do some restoration work. It has a maker’s mark of “Randall&CO CIN O.” and a name branded on it, G.B. Mason. I don’t know if that’s a company or an individual. I’m thinking it was probably a saddle maker from the Pacific Northwest or Montana, possibly even a hundred years back or better. I don’t know much about stitching horses but I think it’s a left handed harness horse. I’d love any info or links to where I can learn more, as well as any thoughts on restoration. I’d say I’m a lower level journeyman at repair and restoration of hand tools but this is a little different. For whatever reason, no matter which way I orient them a couple of these pictures are posting upside down, sorry.

My apologies if I’m in the wrong section, this is my first time doing this. I work at a Leather supply store, and I have a full side of veg-tan with a beautiful Oregon Trail scenery tooled on it. It is a memorial piece, and I want to make sure that I mount it right and take care of it and preserve it in the best manners possible. I consider myself a general leatherworker, and while I’ve mounted things before, I haven’t done anything this intricately tooled or important, and I don’t do much tooling myself. I want to use a service protectant that won’t damage it or anything. My current plan is basically to glue it in the middle area down to a board to keep it flat and act as a kind of plaque, then use small decorative brass nails to tack down the edges and give it a look of being tacked to the board instead of glued. I was going to use Saddle-Lac spray to seal it, but was thinking that maybe I should use something liquid instead so that I can really work it into all the crevices and tooling. Would anybody recommend something to use, or if I should go with wax or acrylic? The story behind it is basically that about 15 years ago we gave a customer a side of veg-tan to tool a scenery on, they disappeared for 15 years, and the side just came back to us with the news that the artist had passed some years back. It is slightly unfinished, with the wagontrain fading into the mountains. Wonderfully appropriate.