Living National Treasure

34 The collar maker

The horse is a piece of a jigsaw and you have to make the collar to fit its contours and shape,’ explains Kate hetherington, one of four collar makers in the UK. ‘You could give someone the patterns to work from, but the art is to make one that will actually fit a horse.’

It takes just a week to learn to create a traditional leather and rye-straw collar, but ‘lots of practice on your own’, elaborates Miss hetherington, who runs a course to this end together with fellow collar maker John Mcdonald from the base they share in Dulverton, Somerset.

After she left school, Mr Mcdonald trained Miss hetherington in the art that was at its peak in the late 19th century, when some 3.3 million horses worked the land. Today, the collars and accompanying harnesses are used mostly for driving, showing classes and some heavy-horse work such as logging and ploughing.

Making a full collar in the traditional manner—stuffing the leather with straw, lacing and moulding it with a mallet, rather than using synthetic materials—might take two to three days, with a heavy-horse collar taking twice as long, yet Miss hetherington finds great satisfaction in this hands-on work. ‘You’re creating something with a purpose that comes to life when you put it on the horse. It takes me 150 hours to make a single set of harnesses with a collar, but they’ll last a lifetime.’

VM www.katehetheringtoncollarandharness. co.uk