picture of one of Chester Hape's trophy saddles

[bruce johnson]

From the Sherdian style thread where I mentioned I thought Chester Hape was one of the best SHerdian style carvers. This is a picture of one of Chester's trophy saddles he made for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Assoc world cmapions for several years. We have it in our local cowboy museum along with several others from Garcia's in the 30's and 40's to modern times,

Chester used a lot of over-and-unders in the joining of stemwork in this particular saddle carving. He establishes the stemwork as having as much "value" as the other elements. One aspect of Chester's style is that he brought the lines for the stickers and leaf and flower stems deeper into the stemwork than many others do. He mostly pushed his swivel knife. Chester has not tooled for several years and is afflicted with Parkinson's disease. This saddle is 30 years old, and still is timeless to me.

Bruce Johnson

[Regis]

Just an amazing work of art.

Thank you for sharing tohse photo's.

Regis

[Oscar B]

Wow! Wow! Thanks for sharing these pictures. See I have a long ways to go yet.

[Leather Bum]

Yes, thank you, Bruce, for sharing those photos. . . I like the Sheridan style, and Chester's work is indeed some of the best.

LBum

[Johanna]

I admire the swirl of the scrolls, and the beaten down backgrounding. The depth of the carving probably doesn't show in the pics as well as in person.

Thank you very much for sharing this with us, Bruce. If you had to name the top 5 or 6 leather carvers (who have passed on or no longer carve), who would be on your list? I'm curious because I'm seen only a little west coast work compared to what you have.

Johanna

[BruceGibson]

Incredible.

[bruce johnson]

Johanna,

I wish I could pick 5 or 6 top carvers who have passed on or no longer carve. Being partial to the Sheridan style (my first wife really didn't like it), I like the works of most of the good practitioners and pioneers of it - Don King, Billy Gardner, etc. I still think Chester Hape took it to his own direction and he is one of my heroes. The saddle I posted pictures of is 30 years old. Blows my mind, it is timeless. Regarding the west coast toolers, all I can really go on is what came out in the early Tandy Books before they were exclusively Stohlman patterns. Lad Haverty, Cliff Ketchum, Al Shelton, FO Baird, I am gonna forgot some here that should be on a short list. There are the Arizona guys - Ray Pohja, Bob Dellis, the guys who taught them, and more.

I am just glad these guys went before and we can build, borrow, and steal from their insight. Some of this stuff is pure innate talent, but most is recognising some little thing someone else did, and then incorporating it, modifying it, or just plain copying it into our style. These guys all did it. Don King didn't just wake up one day and say "I'm gonna tool some swirls and sine waves with smaller flowers and more stemwork and call it Sheridan style carving". All this stuff evolved (he saw at least rudimentary elements of it somewhere) and is still evolving. I am taking a carving class at Elko from Andy Stevens. A young guy from Nebraska whose work reminds me a lot of Chester Hape's. There is some great work in several styles all over. Some of the most awesome Sheridan work comes out of Japan. Lefty Mikuni and his students put most other entries in second place at the contests right off the bat. They come here and take classes, Jim Jackson goes there and teaches. I am glad we have these classes available privately as well as at the shows. We have video lessons and pattern books. We have the internet to see other peoples work and borrow from that. Think how many miles and hours it would take to see this stuff first hand. We have these groups to share and learn on.

I am respector and hopefully a preserver of the past. That said, I think the best work is coming out right now (not an original thought BTW), but that is because we are already standing on the shoulders of some pretty awesome guys who showed us the way. A tip of the Crown Royal to all of 'em.

Bruce Johnson

[Justis Cases]

Johanna,

I wish I could pick 5 or 6 top carvers who have passed on or no longer carve. Being partial to the Sheridan style (my first wife really didn't like it), I like the works of most of the good practitioners and pioneers of it - Don King, Billy Gardner, etc. I still think Chester Hape took it to his own direction and he is one of my heroes. The saddle I posted pictures of is 30 years old. Blows my mind, it is timeless. Regarding the west coast toolers, all I can really go on is what came out in the early Tandy Books before they were exclusively Stohlman patterns. Lad Haverty, Cliff Ketchum, Al Shelton, FO Baird, I am gonna forgot some here that should be on a short list. There are the Arizona guys - Ray Pohja, Bob Dellis, the guys who taught them, and more.

I am just glad these guys went before and we can build, borrow, and steal from their insight. Some of this stuff is pure innate talent, but most is recognising some little thing someone else did, and then incorporating it, modifying it, or just plain copying it into our style. These guys all did it. Don King didn't just wake up one day and say "I'm gonna tool some swirls and sine waves with smaller flowers and more stemwork and call it Sheridan style carving". All this stuff evolved (he saw at least rudimentary elements of it somewhere) and is still evolving. I am taking a carving class at Elko from Andy Stevens. A young guy from Nebraska whose work reminds me a lot of Chester Hape's. There is some great work in several styles all over. Some of the most awesome Sheridan work comes out of Japan. Lefty Mikuni and his students put most other entries in second place at the contests right off the bat. They come here and take classes, Jim Jackson goes there and teaches. I am glad we have these classes available privately as well as at the shows. We have video lessons and pattern books. We have the internet to see other peoples work and borrow from that. Think how many miles and hours it would take to see this stuff first hand. We have these groups to share and learn on.

I am respector and hopefully a preserver of the past. That said, I think the best work is coming out right now (not an original thought BTW), but that is because we are already standing on the shoulders of some pretty awesome guys who showed us the way. A tip of the Crown Royal to all of 'em.

Bruce Johnson

Mr. Johnson,

I agree 100% with your thoughts about how the Sheridan style of carving has evolved and will continue to get better and better as times goes on. Competition gets the juices flowing and pushes oneself to experiment with and improve on timeless designs to come up with their own style of carving. I built custom fishing rods for 18 years and many of my decorative wraps and techniques are listed in "CUSTOM ROD THREAD ART" by Dale Clemens. When I see these same wraps being copied by other craftsman, it it the highest form of flattery to think they like my work enough to copy it. The same thing applies to just about any craft. Without sharing information and learning from others, your work can become stagnet in a hurry. Below is an example of several wraps done only with size A silk, one thread at a time.

[Oscar B]

The rod is just beautiful. There are so many talented artist on this web site, and it make a person strive to continually reach for new heights. Was lucky to find this site. Thanks for having a great place to display work, and the wiliness to share ideas, and receive help with problems.

[Cowboy Crafts Online]

Here are some large pictures of a chester hape NFR trophy saddle. I took these at a friends, he has 3 of these saddles at his house. He is also the one teaching my how to do sheridan carving. He worked for kings and don butler. I hope this post works

Edited April 18, 2007 by snakehorse saddler

[Cowboy Crafts Online]

tired to add pictures but it would not let me, do not know what I did wrong

[Johanna]

If you email the pics, I'll post them for you.

admin@leatherworker.net

To add an attachment "browse" to the picture you want, then click "add this attachment". You can "add into post" at your option (useful for when you want the pictures to appear in a certain order and with text in between) The forum software will create the thumbnail image.

I wonder if they are hi-res pictures? If the file size is near 1000K (or 1 Mb), the forum software won't accept it. A quick way to resize pictures is an MS Powertoy called "Image Resizer"

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloa...ppowertoys.mspx

Another program I like for graphics is Irfanview

http://www.irfanview.com/

Let me know how I can help.

Johanna

[Cowboy Crafts Online]

what size is the largest it will take. they are good pictures with lots of detail. want to put them up for people to study

[Johanna]

Then email them to me and I will make each into their own page, with a link here to click. I appreciate you sharing detailed pictures of Chester Hape's work.

Johanna

[mudman]

I really love Chester Hape's work. It's just incredible.

[Johanna]

Did you see the pics Clay took at Sheridan this year (Rocky Mountain Leather TradeShow sponsored by the Leathercrafters & Saddlers Journal)?

http://www.leatherworker.net/sheridan07/index.htm

The quality of the displayed work impressed me, just like Chester Hape's work.

Johanna

[wood]

I know this is an old post but I just wanted to add that I believe Chester Hape is the best. His tooling quality is what I strive for, needless to say I have a long way to go. Also, Troy West at West Bros. Saddlery has some phenominal work. Just putting in my two cents. Later.

[wood]

Don't mean to change the subject of this thread but I had mentioned Troy West. This is a pic I found of one of my favorite saddles he did.

[Rayban]

Don't mean to change the subject of this thread but I had mentioned Troy West. This is a pic I found of one of my favorite saddles he did.

Seems like I've seen that one b4, it was refered to as a "Sunday saddle"?? Beautiful!!