Meet John L. Blair: Wyoming’s Mozart of saddlemaking and virtuoso with leather

John L. Blair of Shell, Wyoming, is a master saddlemaker whose one-of-a-kind creations command prices upward of $45,000 for a saddle, $15,000 for a leather bowl and $8,500 for a custom purse. He works while listening to Mozart, one virtuoso inspiring another to create stunning leather art.

Mozart casts a kind of spell over Blair as he works in his workshop nestled in the Shell Valley east of Cody. “Once you get going … you’ll get into kind of a trance,” he said. “And you’ll be sitting there tapping on those tools, and it’ll be making a rhythm, and you’ll be lost.”

Blair is a second-generation Wyoming saddlemaker. His work ends up with everyone from working cowboys to celebrities. His favorite thing to make is anything he’s never done before. People have asked him to create everything from “car parts to human parts,” he said with a chuckle. He doesn’t turn them down.

His creations range from practical items like pencil holders and trim for Western suits to fine art vases and bowls that look like burnished wood rather than leather, decorated with silver accents from fellow artisan Ernie Marsh. He once made a leather floor for a mansion at Wagonhound Ranch near Douglas. “You’re into a different type of world,” Blair said. “You can go shoot arrows just down the hallway. It’s long enough to practice archery at the big house.”

Blair’s current project is a purse for a rancher in Nevada featuring cherry red kangaroo hide inside, ostrich leather gussets, and carved flowers with red centers and red berries. He started it in January and expects it to take another couple of months to finish. “Patience is the most important thing,” Blair said. “It’s not your ability. It’s your patience.”

Blair’s saddles are working rigs for working cowboys, not just showpieces for the wealthy. “Some of them struggled to make enough money to pay for it, but they did,” he said. “Because they wanted a saddle done right.” His customers include the late rodeo performer and character actor Slim Pickens, for whom Blair built an elkhorn riding saddle.

Blair learned leatherworking from his father and from Tony Holmes, a saddlemaker in Cheyenne. Holmes didn’t let him touch a saddle for two years. He swept floors and pulled weeds. “You just did not start out building saddles,” Blair said. “It was two years before I was able to touch anything new.”

After 45 years at the same craft, Blair sometimes wonders why he’s still making saddles. Then the leather calls to him again, just as it did when he was a 6-year-old boy. “You have to understand the leather itself,” Blair said. “You’ve got to be able to feel it with your hands and know what it’s going to do.” Sometimes he chooses the wrong piece and has to start over. “It’s a matter of choosing the right piece, and then knowing what to do with it.”

His shop is filled with hundreds of tools collected over 45 years, some dating back to the 1950s, some inherited from his father, others he invented himself from nails or bits of steel. As Mozart plays, he transforms leather into a visual symphony of flower petals, leaf veins, basket weaves and rope edges. “Sometimes a career selects you,” Blair said. “So you do it, and you find a way to keep doing it, and you enjoy it. It’s a struggle upward. That’s just all part of it.”