Victor Alexander, Saddlemaker – Points West Online

Originally published in Points West magazine
Winter 1993

Victor Alexander, Saddlemaker

By Rodric Coslet

In 1992, the Buffalo Bill [Center of the West] received a rare and valuable gift from Victor Alexander, Jr.—a collection saddlemaking tools, patterns, and accessories which his father, Victor Alexander, Sr., had used in his saddlemaking businesses. The initial donation, totaling some 3,000 items, has recently been augmented by an additional gift of 70 tools and 98 archival materials. In its entirety, the collection is remarkable for its intrinsic historic worth, for its size and breadth, and because of Victor Alexander, Sr.’s stature as a saddlemaker.

The senior Alexander was born in Gallup/Ft. Wingate, New Mexico, in 1906, and spent his early years working on dude ranches and competing in rodeos. He worked the rodeo circuit across the United States throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s. A rodeo injury in Miles City, Montana, ended his competitive career and gave him the impetus to seek another in saddlemaking.

In 1935, Alexander married Harriet Newell Evans in Cody, Wyoming, and moved to California. There he worked for the Visalia Stock Saddle Company under the direction of Leland Bergen in San Francisco. In 1940, he started the Victor Alexander Company in Hayward, California, in partnership with Harry Rowell, a local rodeo producer. Several other Visalia employees went with him, including a group of silversmiths who started the Diablo Silver Company in the same plant. The silver saddle pictured at right was made by the Victor Alexander Company, using Diablo silver.

Between 1942 and 1949, Alexander moved around quite a bit, working for several saddle companies in California and Texas. In 1949, he moved to the Bona Allen Saddle Company in Buford, Georgia, near Atlanta, where he became saddle designer and production manager. He used his own tools to design prototype saddles, and then set up the production line to manufacture them. He also designed the company catalogue and arranged for advertising in western magazines. Beginning in 1950, he completely redesigned the Bona Allen line of western saddles, which were produced by the thousands and sold by catalog and through Sears, Roebuck & Company. Alexander retired from Bona Allen in 1970, just after Tandy Leather purchased the company and closed the plant. He made one more move to Ocala, Florida, where he passed away in 1973.

The tools in the give are just a few of the thousands in the collection, which includes a stitching horse to hold the leather while hand-stitching, a variety of punches, a rosette cutter, a selection of rubsticks for burnishing the edges, some stamping tools, an engraver’s stylus, a compass for measuring, a scratch compass for making a groove for stitching, some knives, a box of hammers and mallets, hand tools, edgers, bissonnettes, French edgers, and awls.

A man of boundless energy, Alexander was always looking for better, more efficient ways to do things. Though he could make saddles entirely by hand, he was fascinated with the idea of mass production. The collection includes patterns for dies used to cut out leather more quickly, and stamping patterns which would be turned into metal plates to stamp his tooling onto hundreds of saddles. In this respect, he was probably one of the most prolific saddlemakers in the country in his day. Since he was a saddle designer working for large saddle companies, however, only saddles made by the Victor Alexander Company between 1940 and 1942 bear his name.

About the author

Rodric Coslet is a former intern for the Buffalo Bill Museum

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