L. (LeRoy) Clark Imlay

L. (LeRoy) Clark Imlay

Artist; Occupational; Rawhide

Profile of artist L. (LeRoy) Clark Imlay

1916

2006

Rancher and Rawhide Braiding

Since childhood, when he helped his grandfather do chores on the family ranch, Clark Imlay has been fascinated with all things Western. His grandfather was an excellent horseman who broke and trained registered Percherons and wild mustangs from Utah’s West Desert. Like other ranchers in the area, he used a hackamore for this job – a hackamore he’d fashioned from pieces of rope. Today, over sixty years later, his grandson continues this tradition, constructing hackamores, quirts and other usable rawhide products for working cowboys and ranchers. Clark Imlay was born in Grantsville in 1916 into a pioneer family of English ancestry. After trying his hand at rawhide work as a Boy Scout, he began his lifelong study of the subject. Gathering written materials and tips from old-time braiders on how to prepare, cut and braid rawhide, he has mastered various techniques and knots. Braiders like Bob Cook and Dan Probert, who cowboyed around Utah’s West Desert, shared their methods with him. With practice, he learned to make items that work well for both animals and owners because of their comfort, durability and beauty.
Although he has been making “working rawhide gear” for over fifty years, it wasn’t until retirement from 33 years of teaching art in the public schools that he was able to really devote time to braiding. In the early ‘80s, Mr. Imlay filled orders from throughout the West, mostly for hackamores, his specialty. Used to train horses, the hackamore is basically a halter consisting of a rawhide bosal or noseband, a headstall made from leather, and a fiador that looks like a rein and is made from rope or twisted horsehair. Mr. Imlay uses hides given him by family and neighbors, and occasionally buys hides from nearby slaughter houses. Then he cleans and scrapes off the flesh and hair, stretches, dries and cuts the hide into strings, then splits and bevels the strings so they’ll lie flat in preparation to braid.
Over the years, Mr. Imlay has introduced many rural students to Western crafts, including rawhide work. An accomplished musician, landscape painter, local historian and teller of “fish stories,” he has encouraged young people to appreciate and participate in their Western heritage. Eventually, most of his rawhide work was made as keepsakes for his seven children and numerous grandchildren. Someday, they too may share in the satisfaction Mr. Imlay has experienced in creating objects of usefulness and beauty from the resources of the Western landscape.