Saddlemaker tools works of art
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Welcome sunlight shines through the windows onto saddlemaker Jeff Morrow’s worktable covered with mysterious tools and heavy saddle leather.
Morrows’ business, called Shooting Star Saddlery, is named for the shy purple wildflowers he and his wife Joanne enjoy, since the flowers are a sure sign of warmer weather.
“When you started seeing them, you know good grazing is there, and the summer’s really here,” Jeff explained.
The saddlery is located on Battle Butte Road outside of Niarada in a log house weathered dark brown. Inside, the woodwork is a shiny mahogany color, and the kitchen cabinets remain, although there are industrial leather sewing machines instead of a kitchen table and chairs. It smells of leather, and music plays — good music, such as Ned Miller, Faron Young, Ian Tyson, Wylie Gustafson with some reggae, rap, and everything else.
“I really like having the shop here,” Jeff said, “There’s a good feel to it.”
The marble slab Jeff tools and carves leather on is the tombstone of a calvary man, Harry C. Bryant. The stone was never claimed, and it seems fitting that a calvary soldier’s tombstone is used for making saddles and other horse gear.
Jeff did some leatherwork when he was a kid; that’s also when he got interested in horses. He grew up in North Carolina and worked for a saddlebred outfit, but the horses were “grained all the time and crazy.” Then a neighbor girl moved in.
Morrow said, “She had horses, and she was really cute,” so he hung out and “tried to be her beau.”
However, Morrow met his wife Joanne at college when they both attended Davidson College in North Carolina. Jeff was an English major.
After college, the Morrows moved west to Colorado where Jeff worked on a dude ranch. It was while living on the ranch that Jeff began leatherworking.
“The first thing I made was spur straps with tools made out of nails,” Jeff said.
He also began making belts. Then he graduated to making chaps when they moved to Montana.
Next, he made a rifle scabbard.
“Joanne’s first job teaching was in Browning, and she also taught in Willow Creek,” Jeff said.
"There were lots of horse lovers in Browning,” Morrow explained, “A lot of riding, cattle all over the place.”
Jeff shod horses and broke horses while Joanne taught school. In the fall, he’d guide for hunting trips and then fish all winter. The young couple had electricity, but no running water.
“I’d help my neighbor feed once in a while; there was not much to do in the winter,” Jeff said.
Their son Zak was born in Whitefish while Joanne was teaching in Browning, and then the family moved to St. Ignatius.
Jeff started working with leather full time in St. Ignatius after he grew tired of shoeing horses.
“I didn’t like it,” he said. “Shoeing horses wears out your body.”
Jeff started making saddles about 1990.
By that time he said he’d done a lot of repairs.
“I mean a lot of repairs. I can’t remember if I started making saddles ‘cause a friend gave me a tree or just cause I decided I could do it … ” he said, “Something like that.”
The Morrow family was living in St. Ignatius and searching for land out in the country when the place near Niarada came on the market.
“Joanne called me when I was hunting and described it,” he recalled. “I said, ‘It can’t be that cool.’”
But it was “that cool,” so now the place is home. Besides the saddlery, there’s also a house, a barn, lots of other outbuildings and land.
Over the years Jeff has bought a lot of vintage tools; he could afford them if he could buy them in tough shape and recondition them, he explained. The stamps he mostly bought, and a lot of the horn-handled tools he made.
Morrow has had orders for his tooled leather items from Norway, Sweden, France, England, all over the United States and from lots of folks in Montana. He’s made a lot of saddles, chaps and gun leather as well as smaller items.
Jeff had about a year and a half’s backlog when the recession hit so by the time he got caught up, he started getting orders again.
Although he tries to get small orders done quicker, Jeff admits, “I’m about 8 months out with orders.”
Plain saddles start at $3,500 “with everything you need to start out riding,” he said. “Prices kind of go up from there depending on what a customer wants.”
Jeff explained that a plain saddle takes at least 120 hours to make.
“Might be depressing if I kept track of how many hours I spend making a saddle. I think I figured it out one time, and I was making minimum wage,” Jeff mused.
He uses only the best materials; the saddle leather comes from St. Louis and Pennsylvania, “really old tanneries.” A good saddle, made with high end materials, should last about 100 years.
After making countless saddles for customers and one each for his wife and son, does Jeff have a saddle he’s made for himself?
“It’s coming … been saying that for six or eight years,” he said, smiling.
When he gets around to it, Jeff plans to make himself a real old-timey saddle with full floral carving, a slick fork, exposed stirrup leathers, a loop seat and big skirts that he’ll take to a saddle maker’s contest.
Jeff has earned first prize at the Sheridan, Wyo., leather show in gun leather, scabbards, holsters, and such, and chaps. He received a third this year so with his talent and focus on creativity and tooling, when Jeff makes his saddle it’s sure to be beautiful as well as useful.
Visit the Shooting Star Saddlery website at www.shootingstar.montana.com.
