A Boot Collector Feature
Cowboy, rodeo star, civil engineer, bootmaker, artist, and teacher: a Texas Hill Country legend who called bootmaking his 372-step hobby.
Jack Reed lived several lives before and alongside bootmaking: cowboy, rodeo star, civil engineer, and artist. He spent more than forty years making custom boots for cowboys, ranchers, businessmen, and celebrities, working from shops in the Texas Hill Country northwest of Austin, in Llano and Burnet. His student Richard Cook calls him an icon of Texas bootmaking.
He learned from some of the best: Leno Trujillo, the Rios family of Raymondville, Lucchese, and Ray Jones. Like Jones, he had an engineer’s mind and a perfectionist’s standards. At some point he stepped away from custom work, and he “returned” to making custom boots in the 1970s; collectors prize the pairs he built in the years after. “Some folks like to play golf or fish,” he said, “but I enjoy the 372 steps of boot making.” He believed that when cowboy boots are made right, they are works of art and engineering.
Reed taught as seriously as he built. His course was a one-week, 40-hour crash course in the finer points of making Western boots, and more than thirty students studied under him. Many stayed with the hard work and still make custom boots in the tradition of their teacher.
He also brought the trade together. Reed organized the first Boot, Leather and Saddle Makers Roundup, held in Burnet in the late 1980s. The gathering became an annual trade show, which Kathy and Eddie Kimmel carried on; its 21st edition was held in Wichita Falls in 2009.
Two of his students are profiled here: Stephanie Ferguson, originally from Ohio, studied at Reed's shop before developing her flamboyant colors and sculptural overlay work and opening her own shop in Millsap. Richard Cook was his last student, and when Reed retired in 2000, Cook bought the business and carried it on. Reed died in 2004, at 81.
“They are a part of our life in Texas,” he said of cowboy boots. “We wear them because our daddies wore them, and everybody around you wears them. They go back to the days of the cattle drives, and they are still used as work boots today.”
Four decades and more of meticulous, engineered handmade cowboy boots; the bootmakers’ roundup that grew into an annual trade show; and a teaching legacy of more than thirty students, including two very different bootmakers: Stephanie Ferguson's three-dimensional hummingbirds, coconuts, and parrots, and Richard Cook's traditional made-to-fit boots, built on the business Reed handed down.
A Hill Country bootmaker whose business lives on with his last student, Richard Cook.
Meet Richard Cook