I have been facinated by sidesaddle (or side saddle or side-saddle!) fo r as long as I can remember.  I have been riding and studying and training horses all my life, but sidesaddle holds a special place in my heart.  The history, elegance and famininity are just breathtaking.  I just don't think there is much more beautiful sight than a fine horse under a sidesaddle, being ridden by a woman in a well fitting habit. 

I started this site to try and bring together the history of sidesaddle and ladies riding.  As with many women's arts (frequently called crafts), sidesaddle is often treated as an aside (pun intended) in the history books.  Many of those books, and webpages are rife with mis-information and down right lies about the art.

One of the most outrageous ones I saw in a web article where the author claimed that riding sidesaddle was so dangerous it was the second leading cause of death for women behind childbirth!  Riding for sport was the relm of the upper-class, sidesaddles were specialized equipment that the average woman would not have owned.  So a small, highly visible slice of the population would have had to have been dying by the score for this to be true, yet there are no widespread accounts of riders dying in droves. Just looking at the number of participants should be enough to show that isn't true.

Another wide spread myth is that sidesaddles make horses sore.  Reality is any poorly fitting saddle, or poor rider can make a horse sore.  Most of the problems come because it is not well understood that the rider sits squarely on the back of the horse, just like an astride rider.  She does not hang off the pommels or lean to one side.  A well fitted saddle (both horse and rider) ridden squarely will not make the horse sore.  This is true for every saddle.

The last one I will address here is the petticoat/bloomer problem.  Women would have most certianly worn some type of pants or breeches under their habits.  We know this for several reasons.  It would be very uncomfortable and dirty to ride without them, and it would be indecent when she was being assisted in mounting and dismounting, or if she fell from her horse or the wind kicked up.  Frequently a petticoat was worn with a riding habit when being photographed to give the skirt a more appropriate appearance, but that is not how they were ridden.

That's enough of my pet-peeves, lets get on to the fun stuff!

I am a sidesaddle rider, and I love all things sidesaddle.  I am not a historian.  I loosly organized this site along a timeline, and I looked up how costumers broke up the periods and that is how I came to choose those period names.  It is quite possible that they are not a good choice and might be wrong.  If so, send me an e-mail and let me know how I should break up the timeline.

All of the individual exhibits will open in a new window and tell you where they are also listed, so you can see more like that if you are interested.

No, I don't own all this stuff.  I have collected images from the internet for years, and I am putting them to use here.  If you know more details about something than is listed, drop me a line, I would love to hear from you.  I have marked the photos of things to try and reduce Craigslist and Ebay scammers.

This is where I have collected some of my favorite things.  Or some of the best things of an era.  Basically, it is the place to wet your appitite to explore the rest of the site, or just get a quick taste of what we are about.  Browse around to your hearts content.  Then send me an e-mail and let me know if you had a good time, or if you have any questions.