Celebrating North America’s Cowboy Arts

Celebrating North America’s Cowboy Arts
A close-up detail of Cary Schwarz's 3/4 saddle shows a sea of syringa flowers, and on the saddle dish a rider attempts to tame his bucking bronco. National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum
Lorraine Ferrier
Updated:

Idahoan Cary Schwarz puts his heart into saddle making–a lifelong student keen to improve and perfect his work.

Now in his fourth decade as a saddler, Schwarz is surely a master craftsman, but that’s something that he’ll never call himself, he said in a telephone interview. Schwarz sees ”becoming a master” as a byproduct of perfecting his craft, whereas “being a master” denotes arriving at the summit of a craft, an idea that he believes could inadvertently bring complacency and dampen creative growth.

Lorraine Ferrier
Lorraine Ferrier
Author
Lorraine Ferrier writes about fine arts and craftsmanship for The Epoch Times. She focuses on artists and artisans, primarily in North America and Europe, who imbue their works with beauty and traditional values. She's especially interested in giving a voice to the rare and lesser-known arts and crafts, in the hope that we can preserve our traditional art heritage. She lives and writes in a London suburb, in England.
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