I had to share this fantastic example of writing and testimonial by Mr. Robert Hardin. Enjoy!
I adore the Saddleback satchel pictured on your site. I covet the bag
and its particular shade of Dark Coffee Brown. I can picture growing
old with it or, more importantly, watching *it* grow old.
The structure looks intricately weathered -- antique, archaic, timeworn
-- yet strangely appropriate anywhere: on a rundown LL train, in a
library, in a forest. It makes me want my lineman's goggles, my dusty
50s Bantam paperback of Faulkner's Sanctuary, my locomotive lamp. It
makes me want to pack for a flickering firelight slideshow in an Oregon
cave. It makes me want to sand scratches into my pocket watch and
engrave it with a word like *Trilobite* or *Opabina*.
Slinging such a satchel over my shoulder would be like stepping into
some vintage level from Myst, Fatal Frame or Ico. It would be like
spending a day with a half-wooden, half-metal hinged Stereopticon and a
book-shaped box filled with hand-painted 3D photographs -- all while
sitting on a mahogany chair arabesqued with patterns of handcarved
flies. It would be as surprising, as right, as looking down at the
table onto which I've emptied the satchel's contents and noticing it was
confected from a single block of chestnut oak -- and consists of an arm
and hand clasping the rutted spiral of a rising conch.
It is the satchel to wear to an exhibit of Joseph Cornell. To a night
of fascination with 30s music boxes, watching deco butterfly bells turn
slowly to simple tunes by Weill and Mozart as the lady I've invited
there tries to find the tune and fails, winning my affection as surely
as her pinned hair tempts me to unclamp the hair claw that holds her
florid tresses in place, until they spill across the flap of my satchel,
offset by its deep and variegated color. To find correlations between
her roseate profile and that of the Sarah Bernhardt hand mirror she
resembles, as I tuck it into one of the bag's compartments. To stroke
my chin with mock-seriousness as she lifts one of the bag's D rings and
peers at me through it quizzically, as if it were her monocle.
And then to lie awake afterward beside her with my satchel just below
me, so that I may run my finger along the stitching for reassurance, as
the din of crows and pigeons outside accompanies the brightening sky:
chubby, stubby fellows who greet the day as eagerly as I do the idea of
the Saddleback Satchel, which I now open just as the sky does in the
window beside me: an ideal satchel, which will only grow more perfect
over time.
.
