# Bona Allen late 70's - 1980 custom saddle?



## OldMaidWhovian (Jan 30, 2015)

I've been a serious collector and saddle affectionado for more than two decades. Even though I'm no longer very active in collecting, due to both a severely reduced income and a lack of space, I still spend time learning about saddles, both antiques and vintage saddles. 

I know quite a lot about Bona Allen saddles. Even as a teenager, I was aware how good they were. I know when the company began, and that the last production date was 1981, that a lot of the old movie & TV cowboys often used them, and that the company was actually owned by Tandy Leather roughly the last 10 or 14 years of its life. 

As far as identification goes though, that's a bit trickier than you'd think. 

Bona Allen had a number of ID's, and sometimes none at all. 

From screws marked "BA", or merely serial numbers stamped on the shield joining the rear skirts, to no markings at all, on their aftermarket saddles. 

On saddles sold directly, there was the familiar circle stamp on the front of slick seat saddles, to metal medallions or stamps on the near-side strap holder. 

And some saddles were custom made to order, with or without a maker's mark. Which is where I come in. 

The other day, I swapped a prison-made boy's western saddle and a vintage unsigned damaged saddle, a pair of newer charro spurs & $20, for a like-new fully restored vintage saddle.

I don't own a camera, and I can't find ANY photos on the Internet so I have to describe it. 

It's a 15 inch western saddle in a nice dark cherry-mahogany color, quality oak tanned leather. 

It has a padded, fancy stitched maroon seat of very soft, luxurious, extremely high quality leather. 

It has a low pencil roll cantle--which is very unusual with a padded seat--leading me to guess this saddle was a custom design. 

It has single 7/8th rigging (cinch ring). 

The tree seems rather narrow to me, so possibly it's an Arabian tree? I Might be wrong about that, though. It might be an Association style tree, but that's hard to call because there's no existing standards for tree designs. 

I'd call this a trail or pleasure saddle. 

It's the decoration that has me puzzled though. The decoration is deep and crisp, obviously done by hand. 

It has a stamped border (tiny box with an X inside it). The border is on the skirts, jockeys and fenders...even appears on the stirrup leather keepers. 

However, there's a totally different, much less detailed, border on the front of the fork: sort of a scalloped design.

The rosettes are tiny. And are unique to my experience: Literally, a little 3-D rose set inside a quarter inch rope-edge silver concho, and backed with equally small plain leather rosettes, with metal dee rings for the strings. They seem to be original to the saddle. 

There are long strings both front and back, but I suspect they'd been replaced because while of good quality, they don't match the color of the rest of the saddle. 

On the corners of the skirts and jockey's are hand carved roses. The fenders sport a hand-carved horse heads surrounded by more carved floral tooling. 

BUT.... it's the design on the front of the skirts on both sides that has me puzzled. It's a Big "*BA*" done in hand carved raised letters, in what I'd call slanted, Old English cursive script. 

I questioned the former owner, and he says there's no one in his family with those initials that he's aware of, that the saddle had belonged to his late aunt, who'd kept horses until the mid-80's. 

So, since no one in the family had the initials BA, am I wrong in thinking the big, fancy "BA" on both skirts, might possibly be a special issue from Bona Allen in the late 70's? Especially in light of the fact that they DID use a simple "BA" as a marking in the past? 

What do you think? 

Any Bona Allen experts floating around out there? 

Would those big BA's stand for Bona Allen? Or do you think they're the initials of a previous owner?


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## zandstrafarms (Feb 14, 2015)

Horse head sounds like big w brand saddles, circa 1970s or so. I'll try to post a pic:

I love my Big W saddle btw....


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## Saddlebag (Jan 17, 2011)

The tooling on manufactured saddles is embossed. The metal is cut to the design then damp leather is passed beneath, it's lowered and voila, a stamped piece of leather. One operator could probably do one a minute. Often the way to discern hand tooling is the pattern on the forks will be as distinct as elsewhere on the saddle. This is because the leather is applied first, then carved or hand stamped. The machined version is stamped/embossed then put on the forks. As the leather is worked to fit, the pattern becomes less distinct. BTW, back in those days and earlier, manufacturers would give retailers a good deal on saddles with minor manufacturing flaws. The company logo was not applied. In these cases the retailer often applied his name and or the name of his store.


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