Handed Down - Nevada Arts Council

1994–1995
Saddlemaking:
Eddie Brooks and Alan McDonald
This was the second apprenticeship for Alan
McDonald, who had worked five years ago with
master saddle maker Eddie Brooks of Elko to build a
buckaroo saddle that he used in his job as a cowboy.
Since that time Alan has quit buckarooing, gotten
married, set up in business as a horseshoer, and made
several more saddles. While he has made good progress,
both he and Eddie felt he could use more help on the
very fine points of saddlery that would allow him to
really make a living as a saddle maker.
One fall day last year, Eddie and Alan were examining
one of Alan’s saddles, made about two years before
and heavily used by a working buckaroo. The saddle
had been rubbing the horse on one side, and they needed
to make some adjustments to fix it. Eddie said of
the saddle, “Well, there’s a lot of quality in it. He really
did a nice job of tooling, you can see that. But there’s
never been anybody that made one that there wasn’t a
little tiny thing that they don’t think’s right. Whenever
they look at that saddle, nobody else could see it, it’s not
hurting nothing, but all they can see when they try to
look at the saddle is them little places.” Alan saw plenty
of “little places” on the saddle where he felt he could
have done better, and it was those things that he hoped
to perfect by working with Eddie for a second apprenticeship.
“I had a guy tell me one time,” Alan begins, “he says
you can walk into a room and there can be a hundred
saddles, and you wouldn’t know the first thing about a
saddle, but the Eddie Brooks saddle would stand out
like a sore thumb. Because it just looks good, but you
can’t tell anybody why it looks good, it just looks good.
And it’s all because of the lines and the balance, and the
fit, you know, everything comes together nice. So basically
that’s where I want to get a little better.”
During the apprenticeship, Alan made a saddle that
he plans to keep as a model for people to see when they
order from him. “This saddle’s going to be different,”
he explains. “I’m going to keep it for a saddle to show
people, I’m going to put every flower that Eddie’s got
in his bag on the saddle somewhere so they can see it
stamped out. They can look at this saddle and they can
see the different styles of design, too.” Few saddle makers
can afford to keep a saddle around just for show, so
the apprenticeship gave Alan a rare opportunity to do
just that.
Alan has an excellent understanding of the structure
and use of saddles, because he worked as a buckaroo for
years, but as Eddie says there is more to saddle making
than just functionality. “It’s like an artist when they’re
painting. They can’t put a measurement on that, it’s just
got to be the feeling about it, developing their eye to
make things work, you know, turn out the best.”
Eddie Brooks and
Alan McDonald making
adjustments to a saddle.
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