Dallas-area Tadd Myers has for the past few years trained his lens on a range American craftsmen.
Myers has taken photographs of business owners who create unique, handmade products using traditional materials, such as the cowboy boots pictured above.
The photographer's first subject was Brent Hull, who runs Hull Historical Architectural Millworks, a Forth Worth, Texas company that specializes in the restoring historic buildings.
The business counts among its clients the storied Winterthur Museum in Delaware, which houses a vast collection of precious American antiques. In 2005, This Old House magazine selected Hull Historical for its Contractor Hall of Fame.
For Bruce Cheaney of Cheaney's Custom Saddles, metal- and leatherwork runs in the family. He learned the trade from his father.
The decorative elements on Cheaney’s metalwork are often fashioned from copper and nickel.
Cheaney also makes spurs, and he scrounges metal from, among other places, the discarded axles of Model T Fords.
Bootmaker Carl Chappell keeps the craft of making leather cowboy boots alive by offering seminars for local hobbyists and aspiring professionals.
Each pair of boots takes roughly 40 hours to make, according to Chappell.
A few years ago, the theft of a pair of Chappell’s boots made local headlines. Valued at approximately $10,000, the boots were eventually returned.
Pawless Guitars in Lewisville, Texas, manufactures only one guitar a month.
Owner Vince Pawless, who left the corporate world for guitar-craft in 2002, chooses his raw materials carefully.
Pawless has worked with tricky mesquite wood, as well as spruce, maple, and walnut. The wood is often harvested on a client’s property.
Jay Brown finished his first stagecoach, dubbed “the Weatherford” after his Texas hometown, in 1977.
Before he began making coaches, Brown had a job as a trick rider performing in Wild West shows.
Brown’s stage coaches have found homes on movie sets and in amusement parks.
Despite a lack of automation, Nokona Athletic Goods manages to crank out 50,000 handcrafted mitts per year.
Nokona is a fourth-generation family business currently run by Robby Storey, the founder's great-grandson.
The baseball glove factory in Nocona, Texas burned down in 2006, but the company continued to pay its employees while it moved to a new location in Saint Jo, Texas.
--Josh Spiro
