I am a 55-year-old, ex-traditional fine artist who has gone rogue. I have become. . . *gasp*. . an artisan. My father always discouraged me from becoming an artist because he said I would starve. He was right. Traditional artists are a dime a dozen and you'll always find someone who is far better and more expensive than you are and someone who is much faster and far cheaper than you are. Those are the ones who will not starve. If you are even close to the middle of that spectrum, you will starve.

Ergo, inasmuch as I love to paint, I put away my pigments and chose to work with leather. This came about quite by accident in 2007 when I tried to buy a new bridle for my Lipizzaner mare, Fionna. Lipizzans, if you aren't aware, have oddly-shaped heads. Most of them have broad foreheads, short cheeks, and broad noses. We have to create a bridle from as many as two to three of different sizes: cob, full and sometimes oversize. One of my fellow Lipizzan friends dubbed the finished result as a "Frankenbridle". The name has stuck.

My mare, on the other hand, has a ginormous head. She is 15.3 hands high, which is over-tall for a Lipizzan -- the "accepted" height is 15.2 hands -- and she has a long, graceful neck. As with most breeds of horses, the length of the head is equal to the length of the neck. It wouldn't be a problem, except that Lipizzans have heavy heads. So, you have this lovely white mare with a LONG graceful neck and a huge HEAVY head. OI!

So, I set out to buy a bridle for Ms Fionna. A black dressage bridle is what we need. Oh, and a new bit as well. I measure the key elements of her head and order a Kieffer Diana in Oversize. Oversize is as big as you can get without hitting the draft sizes and in 2007 you couldn't buy a draft-sized dressage bridle anyhow.

The bridle arrives and I put it on her. Everything fits except the browband. It's at least an inch too small and is squishing her ears. Sigh. Being the crafty, handy type, I get out some buffalo leather and start hand-sewing a browband for her. I made it with an open channel and stitched in some Swarovski crystal sliders and cubes. From a distance, it looked pretty darn nice! Up close, not so much ;)

After that I started getting requests for bands and I sought out suppliers for the leather, beads and so forth. Four years later Mad Mare® Studio was registered as an LLC and this year, 2016, Mad Mare® became a registered trademark.