Award winning horsehair artist featured
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News from Ninepipes Museum of Early Montana
CHARLO – The award winning horsehair hitching team of Ron and Shoni Maulding are the featured artists at the Ninepipes Museum of Early Montana’s “First Saturday” event from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 5. During the day, the couple will demonstrate the art of horsehair hitching. The public is invited to view completed work and visit with the artists during this monthly meet-and-greet. The reception will be held in the Dr. Earl Wharton Memorial Gallery inside the gift shop at the museum. Light refreshments will be available.
This husband and wife duo relocated back to Montana in 2013 after living north of Spokane, Washington, for 20 years. Not only do they collaborate on their artistic endeavors, but they are building their house in the Mission Valley together, doing all the hammer work themselves. Their horsehair hitching projects include bridles, quirts, belts, and hitched inlays in sterling silver for necklaces, buckles, and bolos. Shoni does the horsehair hitching and Ron works with leather and sterling silver to create embellishments for headstalls, quirts, and other items.
Ron is also an internationally known bowyer, and is an avid hunter with a longbow and fly fishes. Ron has worked with leather since childhood with a Tandy Leather basic tooling kit. He learned from his dad how to cure out deer hides and work it into tanned leather. When he was a bowyer, he made leather accessary products. He learned the basics of silversmithing from Shoni’s dad, and then did self-study regarding working with silver in relation to hitching. This brings a whole new set of rules. He sometimes wonders where silver goes to when there’s a meltdown. Ron primarily learned silversmithing to set the hitched horsehair apart from other hitchers.
Shoni learned to hitch in 1991 and has produced saleable quality products since 1992. She is still in awe of the beauty that comes from the simplicity of horse tail hair. She learned from the limited information available in print along with personal inspiration. The Mauldings state, “We work daily with the strict definition of inspiration – divine influence, seen as the working of the Holy Spirit in the human soul. This includes the light-bulb ideas, as well as the grunt work of seeing an idea through: the tediousness of hitching, the patience necessary to not have a silver meltdown, the attention to detail in the products created.” Ron says, “A product isn’t ready to ship until we think it can’t be improved upon.”
In 2012, Shoni received the Will Rogers Cowboy Award from the Academy of Western Artists. This lifetime achievement award for gear makers reflects her success in preserving the contemporary western lifestyle. She was also inducted into the Stetson Craftsman Alliance in Cody, Wyoming, in 2010. Ron, a Navy veteran, is a member of the Firearms Engraving Guild of America.
The Mauldings have been commissioned to do restoration work at various sites in the Western states and also for individual collectors. For their larger projects they have set four goals: the items must be functional, have a theme, have a story, and be one of a kind. Utilizing this criteria, the Mauldings won Best Artist in the jewelry/fashion category at the 1999 Western Design Conference in Cody, Wyoming, with their “Flight of the Nez Perce in 1877.” This ensemble included two belts, a buckle, a necklace and a bolo. Some of their restored bridles appear in the book, “Horsehair Bridles: A Unique American Folk Art.” They were also technical advisors for that book, which was published in 2016. Other honors include their Mariposa Lapwai bridle being chosen to represent the State of Montana at the Made in America – Craft Icons of the 50 States in 2015 at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego. Their work has been featured in numerous magazines including Ranch and Reata, Western Horseman, Fiber Arts, Equine Images, American Cowboy, Big Sky Journal, and many others. The PBS station in Spokane, Washington, interviewed the Mauldings for a segment on Northwest Profiles in 2006. They have participated in many shows in Montana, California, Wyoming, Idaho, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, and Washington.
They teach both beginner and advanced how-to hitch workshops at their studio, and Shoni also does beadwork.
Shoni and Ron are the authors of two books that have sold in 23 countries: “Hitched Horsehair: The Complete Guide for Self-Learning,” published in 1997, and “Hitched Horsehair II: Advanced Patterns and Inlay Projects,” published in 2005. Shoni is a member of Western Writers of America, the Academy of Western Artists and two local quilt guilds.
Visitors will have the opportunity to visit with Edgar S. Paxson’s great grandson on Saturday as part of a month-long special exhibit celebrating the life of the frontier artist. Contact the museum at 406-644-3435, for further information.
