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Richard Gillham stitches a leather piece on his German-made sewing machine.

By Jeff Rice
Staff Writer

Richard Gillham didn’t intend to become a saddle maker; like many turning points in people’s lives, it just sort of happened before he knew it.

Gillham, who farms and ranches the Gillham’s Rim Ranch near Peetz with his son Roy, started doing leather craft when he was 12 years old. A half-century later he’s an accomplished craftsman turning out western saddles and other leather pieces that can sell for thousands of dollars.

Like many craftsmen who have rare skills, Gillham is caught in a sort of Catch 22. Ranching takes a lot of time and energy, and it’s been at the center of his entire life. Saddle making also takes a lot of time and energy but it doesn’t pay enough to support him and his wife Nita in the manner to which they are accustomed. For now, it’s a hobby that doesn’t pay much, but doesn’t cost much, as long as someone is willing to pay for the materials.

But when the time and money are available, Richard Gillham turns out some spectacular work.

It all began with a Tandy Lucky 7 leather carving set. He puttered around with leather over the years but didn’t get into it seriously until the late 1990s. About that time Colorado had suffered several abnormally dry years, Richard’s father Dean had passed away, and the responsibility of running the ranch was weighing heavily on him.

He turned to leather carving as a stress reliever.

When he went looking for a sewing machine for his leather work, he was directed to the legendary Dusty Johnson, who was then in Loveland. Johnson had a saddle on display in his shop and Gillham sat in it to talk with Johnson.

“That was about the most comfortable saddle I’d sat in, and I asked Dusty if I could buy it,” Gillham said. “Well, we got to talking and I found out that he had a two-week, one-on-one class in saddle making that cost about what that saddle would cost. I decided to take the course.”

Richard Gillham worked with Dusty Johnson to create this twin holster gunbelt. Johnson would later tell Gillham, “Roy Rogers would have been envious.”

He had to wait more than a year before his turn came up, and in 2000 Gillham went to Phoenix, where Johnson had relocated and was working for Porter Saddle Shop. There Gillham spent two weeks studying with Johnson and returned home with the knowledge needed to build his own saddle.

“The thing I learned was to make saddles just exactly the way he taught me,” Gillham said. “He taught me how to make a basic cowboy saddle with flat plate rigging, and that’s what I make.”

Rigging refers to the way hardware is attached to a saddle. Flat plate rigging, according to the Rod Nikkel Saddle Tree web site, is a common rigging style for cowboy saddles that lets the hardware lie flatter under the rider’s legs.

Over the past two decades Gillham said he’s probably built a dozen saddles for people, including some for Logan County rodeo queens. Although he’s rarely paid what the saddles are actually worth, the intricately carved saddles could sell for thousands of dollars. And at one time, Gillham had thoughts of launching a business. He even put up a web site and began marketing his carved leather goods nationwide.

“My idea was that people would buy western style items from a working rancher in Colorado,” he said. “And I sold some, but mostly to people on the east coast and west coast.”

The rub, according to Gillham’s wife Nita, is that Richard’s artistry sometimes gets in the way of productivity.

“He’s absolutely meticulous about his work, it has to be up to his standards, and that takes time,” she said. “And, as they say, time is money.”

Gillham soon found himself in a dilemma familiar to any entrepreneur; to attract customers, he had to offer a unique and high-quality product, but to make money at it he had to turn out a lot of work in a short time. He had to either charge top dollar for his saddles or produce pieces that were plainer than he liked to make. But he felt that he wasn’t well-known enough, and even had doubts about his own skill level (“I don’t know if I can call myself a saddle maker yet,” he said) and wasn’t willing to walk away from ranching to devote his time to saddlery.

“I took the web site down when I realized I didn’t have time to fill the orders that were coming in,” he said.

While he hones his skills on personal projects, Gillham keeps in mind some advice Dusty Johnson gave him years ago.

“Dusty said to concentrate on making three things really well, and that’s how you’ll get faster,” he said.

So, for now, Gillham is happy to make belts, some home and office products, and even the occasional saddle for friends and family. He worked with his mentor Johnson, with whom he’s formed a lasting friendship, on a pair of 1950s matinee-style holsters that would make Roy Rogers envious; he displays them, complete with movie-prop revolvers and chrome-plated bullets, in his home. One of Nita’s favorite pieces is a leather folio cover she used when she was in an administrative position.

“Whenever things got really stressful, I could rub the cover and know that somebody loved me,” she said with a smile.

But for a leather worker, Richard said, a saddle is the ultimate leather project. His latest masterpiece is a spectacular saddle for his son Roy, which Roy helped him make. The project was truly labor of love and father and son both say it was one of the best times they’ve had.

“There’s something really satisfying about working with your son on a project and watching him use skills you’ve taught him,” Richard Gillham said. “And Roy is really proud of that saddle.”

While Roy doesn’t use the saddle in his daily work – Nita has called the saddle a “museum-quality piece” – he isn’t afraid to use it on special occasions. When Ken McNabb, one of the top horse trainers in the country, offered Roy and some friends a one-day workshop on horse training last fall, the saddle was prominently featured in the arena.

Richard still toys with the idea of someday, after he’s retired from ranching, putting the web site back up and making a go of the saddle making business. The leather goods market, he said, is more in the area of notebooks and briefcases.

“I’d have to cater to people who can afford one-of-a-kind saddles, sort of the elite crowd,” he said. “People don’t ride horses as much as they used to, and if you ride a horse for work, do you really need a saddle that expensive?”

His wife takes a more philosophical view of things.

“Whether you make it a business or not, you have a better perspective of yourself and what you can do,” she said. “You’ll always have that.”

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