SADDLE UP: Traditional methods make Stackhouse & Ellis Saddles a horse of a different color.

• Author: Raymond, Toby
• Position: PICTURE THIS

With more than 4,000 acres of public horseback and hiking trails, Southern Pines ranks among the equestrian community's elite outposts. Which makes Moore County the perfect headquarters for Stackhouse Saddles--many of the customers who pony up $6,500 to $7,000 for one of its custom-made saddles live nearby. But it was golf, not horses, that drew David Stackhouse here. He and business partner Lesley Ellis travel as far west as Texas and north to Wisconsin measuring horse and rider before returning to Pinehurst, where they perfect their "one-stitch-at-a-time" Old World craftsmanship.

Few, if any, other U.S. saddlemakers are involved in the entire process, measurements to finished English saddle. Their customers are in the elite world of equestrian eventing and dressage, which have grown in popularity (and prize money) over the last several years. For the non-horse crowd, eventing is what you see every four years at the Summer Olympics--last year's Rio games were a platform for attracting new fans to the sport.

Many of them find Stackhouse and Ellis, seeking a unique saddle. The duo creates up to 80 handmade saddles a year from a studio attached to the home Stackhouse shares with his wife, Christine. He began making saddles more than 50 years ago as an apprentice at the legendary Barnsby Saddlery, once a supplier to the queen of England. "There was a legal contract that stated I was to be 'indentured' for six years while I learned the trade from the ground up."

Stackhouse worked under the greatest master saddlers at Barnsby for another five years before striking out on his own in 1974. He emigrated from his native England for the U.S. in 1999, bringing his business--and Ellis--with him. Stackhouse had been traveling across the Atlantic for years when a recession in the U.K. prompted him to make the move permanent. He chose North Carolina because he and his wife had discovered Pinehurst while on a golf vacation.

No stranger to the horse world, Ellis grew up riding in Bristol, England, and though she did not actively compete, she became an accomplished equestrienne. While riding was a passion, she also loved to make things by hand, which ultimately led her to study in Walsall, an English Midlands town famous for its leather goods, and find work at Barnsby.

"At college, we were taught modern production-line methods when it came to making saddles, so when I came to Barnsby I was eager to learn hand crafting and was promised an opportunity to do so...