How it all began...

The Sensible Years

I did the sensible thing and took the well-trodden path to University. Within weeks of beginning the tough slog through my commerce degree, I wandered into the art school like a fugitive seeking asylum, and promptly spent some of my tuition on photography classes.

I lived in the darkroom. I took pictures instead of studying. I hid in books and wrote short stories that I didn’t have the nerve to show anyone. I was just a business school student, after all.

The warning signs that this was not for me were everywhere - including the inevitable, cold administrative reality of academic probation - which I came by honestly, and accepted without appeal.

The sensible path continued. I took a real job at a great company, with pension and benefits - the whole architecture of a responsible adult life. I was delighted. I was lucky. And I knew it.

And then I spent seventeen years waiting for it to feel like enough.

The Pull

It never quite felt like enough. Not because the work wasn’t good or the people weren’t good - they were. But there was always this other thing running underneath it. Easy to ignore at first.

I come from a long line of people with the “I can make that” gene - seamstresses, painters, carpenters, and writers, are littered throughout my lineage. Family members who understood that there is a specific kind of satisfaction that comes from working with your hands.

So on the sidelines of the sensible years, I too made things. Some ill-fitting pieces of clothing, random carpentry and home DIY projects with my husband, but leather work mostly - notebooks, wallets, small goods. The experiments of someone who needed to work with her hands.

And then there were the horses.

I learned to ride when I was around nine. And if making things is in my genetics, horses are in my soul.

There is a whole world that lives inside equestrian life - the tradition of horse sports, the connection between horse and rider, the craftsmanship of the tack, the particular beauty of the fashion and the lifestyle. It is a world that takes itself seriously about quality, about heritage, about things built to last. I fell in love with all of it young, and I never fully fell out.

I took a break from riding for university and the early years of building a career - the way you do, when you're broke and practical. But horses had too firm a grip on me. I found my way back to the saddle.

So there I was. Seventeen years in to corporate life, making things out of leather on the side, riding horses on weeknights. Three things running in parallel, wishing I could make them one.

The pull got stronger over time, the way these things do. No amount of gratitude journaling or good sense could quell it. The creative beast I’d been nurturing on the sidelines had apparently unionized, and was now making demands.

And then, an open door led me away from corporate life. And I walked through it.

Saddle & Roam

It didn’t take long to see it clearly. The leather work and the horses - two things I’d been doing all along - clicked together into something that made complete sense.

I could combine them. Make things inspired by equestrian life and style, built to be lived in rather than preserved. Not pristine or precious. Like that old leather satchel that has clearly seen some things, or those boots that have been some places.

I love the way things evolve into objects of affection, the longer you own them, the more places they’ve been.

That’s why I’m building Saddle & Roam.

The Plan - such as it is

I should begin by saying I have no map, and only the roughest of plans.

Since leaving corporate life I’ve been doing what I can only describe as recalibrating. Taking stock of the creative life I’d been building on the sidelines for years and asking myself, seriously this time, whether I was going to let it be the whole thing or keep it permanently in the margins.

The answer, it turned out, was not a difficult one. It was just a scary one.

So here we are. The creative beast is awake and done negotiating.

I will be writing here, and on Substack https://saddleandroam.substack.com about inside the process of building Saddle & Roam — the design decisions, the materials, the experiments, the inspiration, the small victories and the expensive mistakes.

I won’t pretend I’m not terrified. But I also feel more like myself than I have in years. And that feels like exactly the right place to start. 

Let's see where this goes...