Sole Mates: Cowboy Boots and Art

I never really need a reason to visit Santa Fe. If I did, this exhibition at the New Mexico Museum of Art would be the best one.

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Finished boots at Deana McGuffin's Shop, Albuquerque NM *

"Sole Mates: Cowboy Boots and Art celebrates images of the West and views cowboy boots as important symbols of western life.
The exhibition presents more than 130 examples of contemporary and historic art, including paintings, drawings, advertisements, postcards, sculptures, video imagery, and of course cowboy boots.
These images investigate changing aspects of the West by addressing freedom, loneliness, gender, fashion, allure and youth culture."

Oak Leaves, cowgirl boots by Lisa Sorrell **

At the New Mexico Museum of Art, on The Plaza in downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico May 15, 2010 through Oct 17, 2010.

A Bucking Bronco by Frederic Remington ***

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* photo by Blair Clark, 2009.
** Oak Leaves, 2008, Lisa Sorrell, courtesy of the artist.
*** A Bucking Bronco, 1888, wood engraving, Frederic Remington.

Vintage Cowgirl Boots

Great old cowgirl boots. Bench made. No makers mark. They remind me of boots made by C.H. Hyer, Kuykendall and Starnes.

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Heart Stitched Cowgirl Boots

Maker Unknown. ca. 1900
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Bootmakers and cobblers set-up shop in communities along the early cattle trails. Cattle drives in the 1850s could take as long as five or six months. Most started in San Antonio or Fredericksburg. The drives followed a southern route through El Paso to San Diego or Los Angeles and on north to San Francisco. Cattle were trailed to West Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Kansas... beef for the frontier forts and Indian reservations.

By 1866, ranching and cattle trailing was a thriving, growing business. The Chisholm Trail. The Goodnight-Loving Trail. The Western or Dodge City Trail. Trails that would come to define the face of the American West as we know it today.

The bootmakers, known and unknown, who lived and worked along those trails and the boots they made would come to define the Art of the Boot as we know it today.

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Cowgirl Boots: Collection J. Davis

Photography: J. Davis

Rodeo Roots: Saddle bronc riding

John Jordan on Strawberry Roan, 1941. Photo: J.A. Stryker

Saddle bronc riding is a "roughstock" event, both rider and horse are judged. Many cowboys will tell you that Saddle bronc riding is the toughest event in rodeo. I believe that to be the case as well. The technical skills are hard to master. The rider must mark out his horse on the first jump from the chute. To score requires strength, style, grace and precise timing. To score well? Rider and mount must be 100% at odds with each other... yet each must leave the arena a winner. It is the classic rodeo event.

The Saddle bronc riding event as we know it today evolved from "busting"... old timer cowboy slang for breaking and training wild horses to work the cattle ranches in the Old West. It was hard and dangerous work.

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"You know if you get a name for doing something they will always put you on it. It's like these fellows that don't mind riding broncs. Once it get known that they're willing to do it, if there's a mean horse in the outfit they'll get him in their string every time. I was good at wrastling calves even if I was small, so I'd always get the job. But I didn't like to ride broncs - said I was afriad of them. Well, I was. Lots of them were the same way. No good cowhand would work on a horse that was going to go to bucking with him in the middle of the herd. A green horse was all right for a long ride. But not when you were working with cattle."

- Teddy Blue Abbot

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A cowboy who broke horses was a "buster". A specialist, he traveled from ranch to ranch every spring, breaking and training horses. Usually for $5.00 a head. The "busted" horses were destined to become cow ponies. A cowboy's livelihood and his life depended on his string of horses, the cow ponies in his string were the most important tool he had when working cattle.

One cowboy who didn't "mind riding broncs" was Lee Warren. Photographer and journalist L.A. Huffman captured Warren working the round corral on the Box and Arrow Ranch in Montana. The year was 1904.

"While we waited for the horses, Warren took stock of his outfit. Just a plain, ordinary, cow-saddle, bridle, and lariat, spurs, quirt, and some short pieces of grass rope for the cross-hobbing... The big gate is swung open, and the day's work is corralled. An inner gate swings, another swift rush and the six beautiful beasts are bunched, snorting and trembling, in the round corral..."

- L.A. Huffman

The Flying Noose Falls True, c.1904. Collotype. L.A. Huffman

After roping a bronc, Warren would bridle his catch. Next came a saddle blanket, then a forty-pound cow-saddle, Warren's slicker rolled under the pommel.

The First Pull at the Latigo, c.1904. Collotype. L.A. Huffman

Twisting the bronc's ear, Warren would mount the bronc. Eight hundred pounds of horse flesh and muscle ready to go off like dynamite, still for for the moment...

The Ear Twist, c.1904. Collotype. L.A. Huffman

Set in his saddle and ready, slicker for hazing in his right hand, Warren would grasp the rein in his left hand while releasing the bronc's ear. Then all hell broke loose.

Bucking Broncho, c.1904. Collotype. L.A. Huffman

"... one or two quick, short, nervous steps he discovers that his legs are once more unshackled. Up he goes in a long curving leap like a buck. Down goes his head, and he blats that indescribable bawl that only thoroughly maddened, terrified bronchos can fetch, something uncanny, something between a scream and a groan, that rasps the nerves and starts the chill hunted feeling working on your spine... as round and round he leaps, reined hard, now right, now left, by his rider. Again and again, he goes high, with hind feet drawn under, as if reaching for the stirrups. Fore-legs thrust forward, stiff as crowbars, driving hoofprints in the packed earth, like mauls as, as he lands; yet light and tight, seeming never to catch the brunt of the jolts, sits his rider."

- L.A. Huffman

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The quirt. The spurs. The slicker for hazing. They were the ools that gave the cowboy an edge. But it was grit and mettle that prevailed in the end and the cowboy almost always won out. And the beautiful beasts that refused to be broken? They were called Outlaws and Killers. Cowboys from near and far tried to ride them for eight seconds at ranch rodeos... few met with success.

Bucked Off, c.1890. Photograph. L.A. Huffman

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Cowboys today continue to break horses much the same as Lee Warren did in 1904. The outlaw horses are called roughstock now. They will test the most able cowboy's grit... in the round corral and in the rodeo arena. Some things remain the same... as it should be.

References:
We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher. E.C. Abbott And Helena Huntington Smith. Farrar & Rinehart, Inc, 1939
Before Barbed Wire: L.A. Huffman, Photographer on Horseback. Mark H. Brown and W.R. Felton. NY: Henry Holt and Co., 1956

Collotypes & Photographs: Collection J. Davis

Ray Rector, Cowboy Photographer

John Graves writes in his introduction to Cowboy Life On The Texas Plains

"there a couple of main troubles with trying to say in print anything worth saying about cowboys... an astounding lot has already been said about them, both by old cowboys themselves in reminiscences written or dictated late in life, and by observers of whom quite a few have been thoughtful persons with a good knowledge of the subject."

Mr. Graves has a point. Words can, and often do, fail us. Photography rarely does. Photographs append meaning to those events we read about. Most importantly, for me, photographs inform in ways words cannot...

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Ray Rector c.1902

Ray Rector was a working cowboy. He plied his trade on the high plains ranches of the Texas Panhandle. As a cowhand on the XIT, Rector took part in several cattle drives. And, like many cowboys, Ray was prone to wander. But he never lost his roots. Homesickness, combined with the need to overcome malaria contracted in California, bought him back to the healthful environment of West Texas. He settled in Stamford, Texas in 1902.

Stamford, Texas c.1903

No longer able to work as a cowboy, Ray and his brother Glen bought a photography business from a photographer named Higginbotham. Higginbotham taught the two young men everything he knew about the craft of taking and developing photographs.

Glen Rector moved to California soon after he and Ray established Rector & Rector. Ray continued to take photographs in Stamford, then a bustling and growing farm and ranch supply center. Portraits. Circus parades. Church socials. Street scenes. The coming of the railroad. Ranch life. Cowboys at work and at play.

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SMS Flat Top Ranch cowboys branding a calf

Rector was happiest when he was taking pictures of the everyday activities and entertainments of ranchers and cowhands. His constant companion, a Kodak Autograph camera, was the tool he used to relive his cowboy days. Rector made many friends amongst those men, he took photographs on the Flat Top, Spur and Throckmorton divisions of the SMS Ranch.

SMS Ranch Cowboys Saddle-up



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Mr. Rector loved the cowboy way of life. He knew it would change. He also knew what was needed to keep the flame alive... a grand cowboy get together. Old timers, working cowboys and greenhorns. A get together that would perpetuate the cowboy life style he loved so dearly. Rector worked with other Stamford businessmen to realize his vision of a cowboy get together. He worked hard. The cowboy still in him.

Grand Entrance, Texas Cowboy Reunion Rodeo c.1930

The Texas Cowboy Reunion, first held in Stamford, Texas in 1930 was mostly the result of Ray Rectors' ideas and efforts.The reunion is today the largest cowboy get together and amateur rodeo in the world. Still held in Rays' hometown of Stamford. On July 4th weekend for over 70 years. Be there.

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Ray Rector was born on November 23, 1884, in Indian Gap, Texas. He died at his home in Stamford, Texas in January 1933. Thanks Ray... and Happy Trails.

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The photographs taken by Rector serve to remind me of a way life many think disappeared. It's still with us. Changed, one has to look harder to find it. Hell, you have to get off the interstate. You even have to get out of the car. Takes a little looking, but it's there. The cowboy life. And, you can bet your boots that you'll see a cowboy with a camera when you get there.

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Margaret Rector, Rays' daughter, donated over one thousand negatives and prints to the Harry Ranson Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin in 1979. She and her brother Tommy knew how important it was to preserve what was so important to their father. Without their efforts Ray Rectors' photographs, and the history they document, may well have faded into oblivion. My hat's off to them.

M.L. Leddy

Much has been written in the name of M.L. Leddy. I'm pretty certain that the words I put down here are near superfluous. But here goes...

Frank Leddy advertising art, 1947

For those who don't know, M.L. Leddy's makes the finest custom cowboy boots you can buy. Handmade. West Texas style. Bad ass. And beautiful. As cowboy boots should be.

M.L. Leddy and his five brothers started making cowboy boots in 1922. Beverly Franklin Allen, Leddy's granddaughter, and her brother, Wilson Franklin, continue that tradition today in San Angelo, Texas.

I've owned quite a few pairs of Leddy cowboy and cowgirl boots over the years. Still have regrets of having to sell a couple of pairs. Hard times. But I'm glad to have held on to the pairs that I still have. Wear 'em too. Damn good cowboy boots.

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M.L. Leddy & Sons advertising art, 1979

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Wilson Leddy, one of M.L.'s brothers, made these incredible cowgirl boots for Juanita Gray. Equestrian Artist. Rodeo Queen. Horsewoman. Cowgirl. Her boots speak her voice even today.

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M.L Leddy & Sons advertising art, 1979

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My favorite M.L. Leddy's boots. Going on forty. Still kick ass. These will tell you more about West Texas Style than you may care to know. Can't help but "walk like I mean it" when I pull these on.... and they hold a stirrup!

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Monte Foreman illustration used in 1947 Frank Leddy Boot and Saddlery Catalog
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Frank Leddy Boot and Saddlery in Ft. Worth made these boots in 1947. Notice the boot pulls set behind the side seams? Mr. Leddy called them "dog ears". A good idea... the set back pulls make it easier to get the boots on, but I think his "straddle ears" made for a better looking boot. One thing for certain though, dog ear, straddle ear or mule ear pulls a cowboy couldn't go wrong buying Leddy cowboy boots. That's still true today.

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M.L. Leddys logo, 2008

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These are a couple of years new. From M.L. Leddy's Vaquero line of cowboy and cowgirl boots. Still a challenge to get on and off. Boot pulls and bootjack required. Fit like a glove. Excellent finish. High quality cowboy boots. And reasonable. You can pay more for other makers "stock" cowboy boots, but you can't get any better.


These bad boy M.L. Leddy's Vaquero boots come with a story too. I'll get to that another time.

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Juanita Gray's M.L. Leddy's boots. Former Collection: J. Davis
M.L. Leddy's cowboy boots. Collection: J. Davis
Frank Leddy cowboy boots. Collection: J. Davis
Advertising & Catalog Art. Collection: J.Davis
All photography: J. Davis

Mustang

Mustang. The word conjures up all manner of images in my mind's eye. After reading Deanne Stillmans' book, Mustang. The Saga of The Wild Horse In The American West, those images have greater meaning for me.


Eloquent and entertaining. A series of related narratives. Finely written and rigorously researched. Ms. Stillman has given us a book much more than the sum of it's parts...

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Mustangs. Broncos. Rough stock. Cowboys. Rodeos. Her narrative Rawhide: Of Cow Ponies and Bucking Broncos bought these images to mind.

. Bucking Broncs . Cowboys . Eight seconds .

Let 'er buck!

Untitled by John A. Stryker

Joe Alexander on "Pet" by James Fain

Untitled by Gary Winogrand

Great photographs by master photographers. Stryker and Winogrand have been my "subjects" before... check out the archives. Working on a post about James Fain. Stay tuned.

And buy Deanne Stillman's book. Mustang belongs on everyones' bookshelf.

Photographs: Collection J. Davis

1948 Nocona Boot Co. Catalog No. 77

I've been a fan of vintage Nocona cowboy boots for longer than I can remember. Damn good cowboy boots. First class all the way.

This 1948 Nocona Boot Co. Catalog No. 77 was printed during what the late Tyler Beard referred to as the "Golden Age of Cowboy Boots". Inspired design. Master Craftsmen. Savvy Marketing. And a lot of hard work.The Nocona Cowboy Boot in all its' glory.

Ms. Enid Justin and her "boys" at Nocona were on a roll. Catalogs were the axle on which that Nocona wheel rolled. Their catalogs were mailed out, handed out and handed down. There are some extraordinary cowboy boots on these pages.





























Ms. Enid had a passion for Cowboy boots. She was an astute business woman as well. Nocona's mail order forms and self-measuring kits reflected her understanding of the market.

All "penciled in" prices on the pages of this catalog were at the hand of the original owner. The price list, order forms and a self-measuring kit associated with this catalog are posted in the archives. See: 1948 Nocona Boot Co. Mail Order Kit

1948 Nocona Boot Catalog No. 77: Collection of J. Davis
Photography: J. Davis