The Soul of the Saddle

Friday, January 15th, 2010 | Saddle Manufacture | No Comments

Patrick Keane Dressage Saddle from Advanced Saddle Fit

It’s simply incredible to us Americans (or at least to me) how truly “cottage” much of the saddle industry is in the UK, where all of our saddles are made.  It’s extremely human-intensive in comparison to some of the big French, Italian, and other European saddle makers who turn out extraordinarily consistent saddles one after the next, because they are produced almost entirely by automation.

For example, a high-end French or Italian saddle typically comes out of very modern, high-tech, fully automated manufacturing plant.  Human hands do very little until the last finishing bits, when a person actually hammers in the enamel nail head.  The labor component of this sort of modern Continental saddle production is a fraction what it is in the traditional saddleries of England.  In these up-to-date European plants, even the wool is precision-blown into the panels by an air compressor (though some use foam panels exclusively).  There is little or no variation in these saddles, which are consistently lovely in their way.

There is, of course, a reason that we have not embraced this type of saddle up to this point, which is that horses are far from uniform.  Designing and producing saddles meant to suit “the mean” (whatever that would be in horses or humans) is a legitimate business objective, but whether this best serves the interests of individual horses, who definitely don’t conform to a mean in reality, is another matter. › Continue reading

Tags: custom-made saddles, hand-made saddles, horse-friendly saddles, Patrick Keane Saddles, Patrick Saddlery, saddle design, saddle making, Saddle Manufacture, saddle production England, saddle production Europe, saddle trees, Walsall

Resistant to Research; Impervious to Logic, Part 1

Monday, December 14th, 2009 | saddle fitting | 1 Comment

Critical thinking is something we’re all supposed to do – like daily flossing.  When it comes to saddle fitting, critical thinking means closely examining what we think we know about saddles, and how exactly we acquired the knowledge we think we have. It requires an honest examination of our deepest assumptions about how the world is ordered, because in saddle fitting, as in life, “facts” are subject to interpretation.

These are some of the primary “fact-based” problems we run into all the time:

1. Since riders have credit cards and horses don’t, rider appeal nearly always trumps horse fit in designing saddles commercially. (If you doubt this, take a look at how saddles are described in marketing material, which is overwhelmingly biased toward how well the saddle will suit the rider.)
2. Very few riders (and not all saddle fitters) have sufficient knowledge of saddle design and technology to evaluate comparative fit considerations accurately. In this, they get little or no help from manufacturers.
3. Not every saddle maker/designer works with hundreds of horses in the field every year as we do.  Many of them see only a small handful of horses, and rarely do they systematically follow the progress of individual horses to see how well particular saddle solutions work (or don’t work) for different types of horses over time.

The most deep-down, almost primal assumption among riders is that somewhere in the universe there is a saddle that the rider will absolutely love.  Moreover, this “one true saddle” will be just as brilliant a fit for her horse as it is for her. The corollary to this assumption is that saddles can be customized or custom-made to meet the most exact requirements of the rider without compromising on optimal fit for the horse.  In fact, this is exactly what a “custom saddle” is supposed to achieve (according to this assumption).

In reality, whether the craftsmanship of a saddle is exquisite or gross, the actual technology is similarly crude, about on par with furniture, which varies greatly in refinement, but not in basic concept.  In saddles there is a single, shared bearing structure (the tree), with a seat on top and panels underneath.  Since all the pattern pieces have to meld harmoniously to the shape of the tree above and beneath, the reality is that it isn’t always possible to achieve a particular rider feel without affecting horse fit.

So, here’s the nub of it: do you, dear reader, want a saddle that is designed from the rider down to the horse, or from the horse up to the rider? That should be a rhetorical question, but sadly it isn’t. There are any number of saddles on the market that are immensely popular with riders precisely because they are designed so well for human appeal.  Apparently it’s not too hard to convince people that the saddles they love best for themselves will also do justice to their horses.

Tags: horse fit, rider fit, saddle design, saddle fit, saddle fitting, saddle technology

The battle for the soul of the saddle fitter

Sunday, October 12th, 2008 | saddle fitting | 2 Comments

It is my impression that virtually every saddle fitter I have ever met has a genuine concern for the comfort of the horse.  It is thus fantastically frustrating that we are lacking a science-based, unified theory of correct saddle fitting.  Most of the time we don’t really know what is optimal for a particular horse and we have to rely on personal experience to make that judgment.  To some extent — for me at least – judgment derives from years of digesting the kind of “learning experience” that I might have preferred to avoid if possible.

These photos are clear examples of conflicting philosophies of saddle design:    

I find it extraordinary that there can be such divergence of opinion about some of the most fundamental aspects of correct saddle fitting.  On several occasions, I have had the opportunity to hear presentations by well-known luminaries in the field who have developed their own brands based on particular design concepts.  I have tried to be as objective as possible in evaluating what I understand their approach to be, and to be open-minded to new concepts that might help me to be a better saddle fitter. › Continue reading

Tags: pliance testing, saddle design, saddle fitters, saddle fitting, saddle panels, saddle technology

Welcome to my world: Saddle Fitting for Smarties

Sunday, September 28th, 2008 | Introduction | No Comments

“Any color – so long as it’s black.” - Henry Ford

The key is the tree; it's the part you can't see

This blog is about saddle fitting, or at least my experience of saddle fitting.  It is the product of time in the field and in the factory, seeking, testing, gritting teeth, frothing with excitement, sucking it up in the face of failure, using foul language, getting a little closer, losing the trail, stumbling upon the right trail again; all illuminated over time by enough enlightening “ah-ha!” moments to keep the quest fresh for me year after year.  If you have any questions you would like to see addressed in the blog, please e-mail me at info@advancedsaddlefit.com, and be sure to include Blog in the subject line.

I hope this will become a forum for the lively exchange of ideas, a place for other professional saddle fitters to share the benefits of collective experience, and a destination for the curious consumer looking for a more probing treatment of saddle fitting than the cursory guidelines listed in “The Seven Points of Saddle Fitting” (or the 10 points, or 14.6, or any prime number higher than 23, depending on who is composing the list). › Continue reading

Tags: saddle design, saddle fitting, saddle trees, Society of Master Saddlers, Walsall