Czech woman makes Western-style cowboy saddles for a living
Czechs have a fascination with the American West that is unexpected and often baffling to foreigners not so familiar with some of the more niche aspects of Czech culture. But few have gone so far as Dáša Vaňková, a woman in a small Czech village who spends her days making made-to-measure cowboy-style saddles for customers at home and abroad.
From the Czech “tramping” subculture movement, partly inspired by the US “Wild West”, to the popularity among Czechs of German author Karel May's series of novels about the fictional Native American hero Winnetou, Czechs have found aspiration and dreams of a simpler life in romanticised portrayals of the American West since at least the founding of the First Republic.
But the Czech enchantment with “cowboys and Indians” extends beyond even country and western music and movies such as the Western parody Limonadový Joe (Lemonade Joe).
Tucked away in the small village of Otročiněves, about 40 kilometres outside of Prague, is a workshop with walls covered with thick leather, metalwork samples and decorative belt buckles. On a rack in the corner of the room, a beautifully decorated Texas-made saddle awaits cleaning and repair. In the middle of the workshop stands a wooden frame with a laminate model of a saddle.
Incredible as it may sound, this workshop belongs to Dáša Vaňková – a Czech woman whose life’s calling is making and repairing cowboy saddles. For almost 30 years, she has been crafting original custom-made Western-style horse saddles according to the requests of her customers. How on earth did a Czech woman in central Bohemia get into this line of work?
She says she was trained as a saddler and leatherworker, but learnt a lot about the specifics of her niche trade from a friend who had a Western-style saddle shop.
“He taught me what’s what and how it should look. What the frame looks like, what the leather looks like, how the leather should be cut.”
After moving from Prague to Otročiněves she opened her own small workshop near her house. She got her first order from a neighbour, and things grew from there. Nowadays, she gets commissions from all over the place – even from abroad. She makes the saddles to measure, with whatever materials, colours and custom decorations her clients want – even if the requests are sometimes difficult to fulfil.
“I had a customer that wanted a custom-made sheath for a knife, and he wanted a bit of crocodile skin on it. Buying just a small amount of crocodile skin is difficult, so I called a colleague who makes shoes. Fortunately he was able to lend me a piece of crocodile skin, because I wasn’t about to buy a whole crocodile on account of one order.”
Vaňková evidently loves her job – and even after almost 30 years, she says she never gets tired of it.
“Even though I’m always making saddles, each one is different – the leather is shaped differently, it has a different colour, different decorative features. It’s fantastic.”
