Rescued
in poor condition after years of neglect at the back of a local garage,
this saddle apparently traces back to being bought from "a
circus" although it is unclear whether by the elderly owner's late
husband or by a previous owner, and is likely to have been the one on
display for many years at the Anatomical Boot Company in Birmingham.
Our
research confirms that it dates
from the late 1800's to early 1900's and in the opinion of American expert Bill
Manns around 1900-1910, and was probably brought to England with "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" Show
on one of their European tours between 1883 and 1913, most likely in June 1903 at
the time of his parade through New Street in Birmingham.
It
has an expertly repaired clean 8" cut in one fender, which indicates that
it might have seen military service at some point and could have belonged to William
F Cody himself, although the heart
tooling behind the cantle suggests either Calamity Jane or Annie Oakley as more
probable candidates !
All
pure conjecture of course in the unfortunate absence of any
substantiated provenance, but there are times when circumstantial
coincidences have to be considered as possibilities
if not probabilities ...
Imagine our stunned disbelief when out of the blue
at the end of November 2003 we received an email on behalf of
her father Ernest King Marks from Michelle Marks Clark,
great-granddaughter of George Marks of the Marks Brothers Saddle
Company, enquiring about the 'family' saddle they had seen on our
website !
The
saying "it's a small world" has never been more appropriate
and it seems incredible that almost exactly a
century after the saddle was brought to England, the missing link to its maker can be
discovered purely by chance thanks to a technology which even their
celebrated contemporary visionary Jules Verne could hardly have
imagined !
