Origin of floral carving

[Davem]

Wild Bill Hickok had a pair of holsters with fish scale stamping.  Slim Jim type.  I actually used a spike to make a stamp that was what I wanted. The Tandy "mule shoe" is too small.  In nay event when did holsters with floral type carving show up? Was there an actual date or did it pre-date the era?

[Marshal Will Wingam]

I'm not an expert in this but I took a quick look in Packing Iron to see when floral carving as we know it first started showing up. There were floral designs back as early as 1855-1865 but they aren't what we know today as floral carving. From the photos in PI, it looks like incised floral designs were done as early as 1860 and floral carving more like we see today started showing up around 1875 or so.

There are some forum members who know a lot more about this than I do. Perhaps one of them can shed a little more light on this for us.

Do you have a photo of the Hickock-type of fish scale stamping you did?

[Skeeter Lewis]

The Mexican style of tooling was schematic and two-dimensional, and Main and Winchester continued that tradition. They certainly tooled holsters in that style with floral designs. But the Anglo style that aims at an illusion of depth came along later, perhaps around the 1880s, though there are no doubt earlier examples.

[Davem]

When I was a kid the Mexican leather work was the best, what everyone wanted.  It seems like no one wants to support the craft any more.