"MidWestern School": What Do Early Heiser Holsters Look Like?

The Heiser company is one of the very oldest of gunleather makers, but the company was not a gunleather maker in Hermann Heiser's time. His death in 1904 roughly coincided with the appearance, and threat to saddlery, of the automobile; notably the Model T in 1908. And it was his sons who branched off into gunleather at that time.

Attempts have been made to date Heisers by their maker's marks, of which there are many, and we do know which is the earliest mark; but after that crude mark, Heiser's holsters were made in all of its eras with all of the marks. Earliest yet also the latest is the famed 'football' mark that is known to be used from 1906ish to 1968 when the company, now owned by Keyston Bros, abandoned gunleather altogether. To avoid being caught in the trap of the maker's mark, we instead rely on the particular holster's first appearance in a dated catalogue. And it was our research that accurately dated Heiser catalogues for the first time.

Generally I've retained only images where I have both front and backside of the holster, but there are plenty of exceptions in the below screenshots of my subdirectory for the earliest Heisers while the Heiser family were owners. There are two more eras: when the family sold to The Denver Dry Goods, and a few years later when The DDG sold out to Keyston Bros. Ironically Samuel Keyston, father of the KB founders, was Hermann Heiser's partner in CO. Additional models appeared in each of the later eras while other styles disappeared.

The group images can be enlarged as a set, by clicking at least once on the image; then a second time to get the largest version. One cannot enlarge the individual images. Want bigger images? Get a bigger desktop monitor, mine's a 30" and the layout is optimised for me not you (no offense meant) because I created the computer subdirectories for my research vs. for publication. Don't try to learn from these images with a mobile phone!

It's a bit cheeky of me to include several Gallup and Gallatin 'california' scabbards. G&G's Denver saddlery was purchased by Hermann Heiser to form his own operation and he continued in that same building until his death.

The 'heisers (79) and (80)' are not the Nazi symbol but instead are the Navajo 'twirling logs' symbol.

All of Heisers many maker's marks coexisted in the 1920s except the very earliest of them; beginning with the 'football' mark that was used up until the very end, which was 1960s. Because they were then used interchangeably, they don't necessarily tell you when the holster was made. For example, the FBI No. 457 has been seen with all the marks except the two earliest and the four final ones that are Keyston's anyway; but the 457 was not introduced until 1939's catalogue.

To read more about it all in my book titled "Holstory -- Gunleather of the Twentieth Century

-- the Second Edition", click on the new link at top of page.