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Questionable saddle

1K views 6 replies 6 participants last post by  SouthernTrails 
#1 ·
Got a first hand look at a saddle with a tiny tag that said Made in India. Was I impressed? There was nothing good I could find. To the untrained eye it looks nice. You could almost say it's pretty. It is nothing I would recommend to anyone. I just wish this lady had talked to me first. She didn't know what to ask about or to look for. Maybe one day our governments will ban the import of these saddles for being unsafe.
 
#2 ·
I've always been a little stumped by these saddles. Why can't they (or won't they) make decent saddles in India or Pakistan? I'm sure the English taught them some of their excellent saddle-making traditions, techniques, and designs over the years. I suppose it's a simple market-demand and profit equation. People do buy them, so they keep making them.
That would explain why many of them are poorly made, but it seems that all of them are. You'd think that at least a few of their saddle-manufacturers would make a good saddle to compete with the rest of the world. Is there a single saddle out of India or Pakistan that is on par with the European, Australian, or North American saddles?
 
#3 ·
I haven't seen a good saddle out of India or Pakistan yet. My objection is to the quality of the leather. My experience is limited to two polo saddles made by two different companies, though, so I'm hardly an expert in all saddles made in that region.

One was purchased by a player for his grandkids. His groom objected to the saddle and was able to tear one of the skirts by hand. The other I rode once and the finish was very odd and it developed tears under the jockeys quite quickly. They both seemed to fit horses okay.
 
#4 ·
I used to work for a guy that owned a sale barn. He held a horse sale the first Friday night of the month. The week before the sale we would hop into the pickup and drive into the city to some warehouse that sold all that crappy imported tack. He would tell me to pick out stuff to sell in the tack sale before the horses sold. It used to make me furious...junk...pure junk....
I tried to get him to sell better quality stuff, but he always told me that it never sells.
So you can only imagine if people are paying $300 for a new saddle at the auction what it actually cost to make....because it wasn't half that price out of that warehouse.
 
#5 ·
Anyone get squeamish. In India they send kids out to collect cow urine to tan the leather with. It's definitely not the good oak leaf tanned leather that goes in to good saddles. With those made in India, it's also what you can't see. The hardware is low grade often full of air bubbles. The makers are smart enough to make the saddle look pretty and that all too often is what sells, plus the low price. When I bought my first saddle it cost me half a month's wages. When I bought my second it cost me a full month's wages. People will spend $3000 on a horse yet want a $200 saddle. When your life depends on this saddle holding together, why take a chance?
 
#6 ·
They could do a good job if they tried, but cost and volume is all, it seems. Their drum-dyed leather takes 4 weeks from cow to cutting compared to 12 months curing for English pit-tanned stuff.

Loveson (now sadly defunct) who built their own factory in India to take advantage of cheap labour, once told me they'd had a saddler out there for six months trying to teach local staff how to stuff a panel correctly (they exported leather and trees from the UK) and were still unhappy with the results.

Indian leather has improved tremendously in the last 20 years (one entrepreneur even bought up a closed UK tannery and shipped the lot over there), but generally it's still not great. But the main problems are their trees and stuffing. If they ever get those sorted they'll corner the world saddle market.

Cavalrytales Blog
 
#7 ·
They could do a good job if they tried, but cost and volume is all, it seems. Their drum-dyed leather takes 4 weeks from cow to cutting compared to 12 months curing for English pit-tanned stuff.

The Leather in those Indian Saddles is from Water Buffalo the Saddle Makers get from along the banks of the Ganges River. Won't go into details......

And Saddlebag is correct, 80% of the leather is tanned with urine, only a few use somewhat proper chemicals



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