Handcrafted bits, buckles and spurs glimmer as the morning sun spills into the crowded workroom of Boyd-based artisan Ladd Clark.

Clark fits the form of the classic cowboy. He’s tall and lean with a thick gray mustache. Intense eyes of amber and steel blue light up when he talks about his craft.

“He’s one of the few men that makes saddles the old way,” said Harold Johnson, a Boyd rancher and one of Clark’s clients. “He does excellent work.”

Clark used to tour the circuit as a bronco rider.

“I grew up in Fort Worth and I used to rodeo for a livin’,” Clark said in a quick-speaking North Texan accent. “I was a bronco rider, but I got too old for bronco ridin’ and I started doin’ this.

“It’s a lot like brain surgery, but you earn a lot of money for bein’ a brain surgeon. After more than 40 years of makin’ saddles, I still don’t make much money.”

Clark worked for several saddle makers before starting his own business. He lived and worked for a long time at a ranch between Fredericksburg and Johnson City. Six years ago he moved to his current shop, Ladd Clark’s Saddles and Cowboy Gear, in downtown Boyd.

His shop is a veritable museum. Countless cowboy memorabilia and gear line the walls and coat every available space.

He also used to work as a carpenter. Now he mainly makes custom saddles and rebuilds old ones. He also crafts other leatherworks such as chaps and reins and bridles and hackamores. He even creates leather Bible covers for some clients.

Clark holds fast to tradition. He insists that all the parts that go into his saddle be hand made. He even does his stitching on an antique, foot-pumped sewing machine.

“He’s sort of like one of the last of a dying breed,” said Jim Anthis, a resident of Alvord and a visitor of Clark’s shop.

Every ingredient he pours into his saddles are made in the U.S.

A Burleson craftsman, Darrel Slinkard, makes all of the trees for Clark’s saddles. The trees are made from bull hide and ponderosa pine. All his leather comes from one of only two tanneries left in the country.

Since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, the number of tanneries has skyrocketed in Mexico as most American cattle ranchers ship hides south of the border for tanning.

All of Clark’s metalwork also come from nearby craftsmen as well.

“I like building saddles the most of anything do,” Clark said. “But it is the least payoff for the most work. If I got minimum wage for the number of hours I put into makin’ a saddle, I’d be rich.”

He said the cost of materials has gone up dramatically since he first started. He points to a saddle with an ornate design and an original brand on the side. It’s a saddle he is making for a veterinarian in Oklahoma.

“The materials for this saddle cost $1,200,” he said. “They used to only be $80 when I started.”

Clark laments the steady disappearance of saddle making in America.

He said most people will purchase the less expensive foreign saddles.

When he worked in the 1960s, he said he had 30 custom saddles on order. Now, he has three.

“It’s a dyin’ art,” he said. “There are going to be less and less every day now that they make most of the materials overseas.”

But he said a saddle must be handcrafted for the rider and the horse. One can’t just buy some random saddle and expect it to fit the horse and rider perfectly.

“You need to talk to the horse owner about their horse,” Clark said. “Most people don’t even know what they want.”

After learning about a client, Clark then begins to form an image in his mind of what the finished saddle will look like. He also takes the comfort of the steed into account.

“I try to make the saddle as comfortable as possible for the horse. Most people don’t understand this, but it has to fit the horse just right.”

Clark turned 60 last month and he expects to keep on making saddles as long as his hands still work. Although the saddle industry continues to change with the rise of globalization, Clark clings to the original way as the sun descends on an era.