Official Carving Styles

[skipj]

Are there any "official" carving styles. I know about Sheridan and the "old" style of floral carving Tandy books show. At the Show in Wickenburg this spring, there was a class teaching five styles. When I looked at the holsters offered by "Purdy Gear" she listed far more than that.

SkipJ

[Randy Cornelius]

Sheridan style seems to be the most popular these days depending on where you are. It was started by the late great Don King in Sheridan, Jessie Smith does what he calls a Northwesten Style, then there is the Porter or California style. My son thinks that if it is not Sheridan it's no good. I have my own style that is me. A little of each with some of my own ideas of what I like mixed in. I like the porter style as it is simple and easier to carve than Sheridan and the bigger leaves and flowers cover a lot more area. Porter has a lot more background areas which some people don't like. I took a pattern class from Al Gould and he draws patterns with very little background as he says he hates to use a background tool. I like doing Oak Leaves but seldom have a call for them anymore.

Randy

[bruce johnson]

Skip,

I took Jesse's class at Wickenburg. It was pretty good to see how one guy sorts out the different styles. I think he broke it into Sheridan, Northwest, Texas, Porter, and California (Visalia). I understand the basic differences, but there is a fair amount of cross-over, and has been evolution in styles over the years. One guy in the class kind of put the different regional styles into perspective for me. He compared them to accents and local speech. You might grow up in Canada, but move to Texas or Oklahoma, and pretty soon "Y'all are fixing to get some work done, hey". There really aren't any hard and fast categories for any kind of style, but you can borrow from all of them and make it work.

I think there are infinite styles. Within Sheridan, some guys say that when Don King and Billy Gardner were working together on the RCA saddles, not many could tell who tooled which parts. But turn them each loose and it was different. Chester Hape, Jim Jackson, Clint Fay all have different styles within Sheridan. There are different guys who stamped at Porters that the guys who know could pick out who did the work. Same with Stanley Dias (?) and some of the stampers at Visalia. Even thought it may fit into a "style", it is still individual.

[skipj]

Thanks, that helps. I had always thought that the "Western Floral" in Tandy was the only way. When I started doing leather again, I heard about Sheridan. Purdy Gear in her descriptions of holsters talks about individuals carvers styles which fits into your answers.

Thanks, SkipJ

[robert]

Neat discussion... i am just learning my way around the site, so sorry if my post is a few days late.

I love learning about the regional styles - i too started with the "Tandy" style, then moved to closer to a "pure" sheridan (ie - imitating work by clint fay, bill garder, et al), then did some projects with california flowers like jeremiah watt and others use. lately, i have been studying some of the old texas saddlemakers, and trying to draw flowers of that style into my work.

Some of the old tandy doodle pages by ken griffin show "arizona style", "california style" and "texas style". The book "packing iron" has lots of old pics, and a lot of the work out of colorado has a definite similarity to some of the texas work. In addition to the difference in flowers and leaves, the regions used different style tools. Some regions only used bargrounders, while in Texas, a "birds eye" or round backgrounder was popular. California stampers used vieners instead of swivel knife cuts on their "stickers" or vine leaves. Texas vines had big bulbous vine leaves, and were typically done with smooth pearshaders. There a lots of other differences... for example... texas stampers used cam tools in the same way that other parts of the country used a mule foot....

Its all great work. Like bruce says - it blends together, but if you go back to the early to mid 1900s, you can see some differences. Its fun to study in the same way that regional history of any kind is fun.

[Zilla]

I guess I'm lost as to the different styles. Do any of you have links or pics you can post showing these styles?

Kev

[Tanya]

Hi!

Information not the certain...

Somebody can list the main styles and their features?

In more detail

[dm110]

I am looking for information as well, there is no one in my area that teaches leather stamping & carving. I am trying to find a source of information

just basic western filigree would be great to start with. tandy does;t offer much in the way of instruction any more

[CaptQuirk]

Instead of asking for examples, can anybody recommend a good book that covers the many styles? I've been pretty much sticking with Stohman's books, and would love to see other stuff.

[rktaylor]

I have Bob Park's Western Floral Design and highly recommend it. There are other books more specific to Sheridan, but I don't have any of those.

Randy

[Bob Blea]

I wish there was a book out there that showed all the different styles and talked about the different elements of each.  I've never found one nor have I found much written about what defines a particular style. I've tried to collect bits and pieces about what defines the various styles but much beyond Sheridan and Northwest, I can't tell you much.  Most of what I know seems pretty subjective, and there really doesn't seem to be hard and fast rules.  As others have said, within each style there were individual traits of the person carving, so it comes down to how much of you goes into your carving style.