Beautiful crafted leather head pieces on these elephants, not the cheap plastic/nylon crap seen today. Does anyone know who's elephants they are, or either of the gentlemen walking with them?
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Unknown--1933
Posted by
Wade G. Burck
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3 comments:
Agreed. I'd love to do a fancy spotted elephant harness just for fun if I could find an old one to get a pattern from. I'd also like to do a knock em dead liberty harness just for the hell of it, one day when I get the time.
Ian
Ian,
There are a lot of things that are not better today, then they were in the past. A lot of things!!!! In my opinion one of the "products" that has tanked the worst is hand made saddles and harness, including elephant headpieces and falcon hoods. With rare exception, today's plastic/nylon/neoprene crap isn't worth looking at, let alone caring for it. Use it up, and throw it away. It's worth no more than that. You need only look, feel, and smell a restored set of team harness outlined in silver dot's, or see a picture of elephant headpieces like this to accept the hand crafted animal product industry of today took a step backwards into the 21 century. To quote John Milton, "case closed."
Wade
A lot of it is money. I try to keep my prices low, but even if you were able to work for minimum wage (which I wont) there's probably 20 hours in one of those headpieces, plus the cost of leather and hardware, plus, of course, you have to be able to pay other shop expenses, like rent, utilities, etc. There are very few harness makers left, and the Amish stuff is pretty utility, with no refined stitching or attention to detail for the most part, but they are willing to make 50 bucks for a full day's work, so... What a shame though - fine harness is a thing of beauty.
Ian
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