GUEST: These belonged to my grandfather. And it is some reins, rawhide reins, and hobble made by Luis B. Ortega, and also a book that he signed to my grandfather, and some handwritten instructions, because my grandfather needed some assistance with knowing how to tie something. And they became friends when my grandparents lived up in Cottonwood, California, by Redding.
APPRAISER: The king of rawhide braiding was Luis Ortega. And if you were a reining horseman, especially in California, you had to have Ortega gear. Now, Ortega learned from a Chumash Indian man, who was born in 1805 and died in 1915. So when Ortega was a little boy, he was sitting around watching this guy make this stuff. It's not easy to make.
GUEST: It doesn't look like it.
APPRAISER: It's not. You start with a cowhide that's a dried-out, stiff cowhide and you start cutting strings in a big circle all the way around, smaller and smaller until you get to the center. And you make these strings that are less than a quarter of an inch wide. And these are about a 16th of an inch wide.
GUEST: Oh, wow.
APPRAISER: So you cut those strings out of rawhide, and then you're ready to start braiding. And it's a very tedious, time-consuming effort and takes a lot of skill. And the thing that's great about the reins is that he signed them. And it's hard to sign something like this, there's no place to sign it. But here, he signed it on the inside of the popper. What you have here are what are called closed reins with a romal. The reins are closed here and the romal goes back and across your hip when you ride, and you ride with one hand. These are hobbles. Put them on the horse's front feet so they don't run away. Ortega had three levels of gear, basically. His basic level was all straight rawhide, was one color just like this. His second level is what this is. It's two colors. Kind of a salmon red color and rawhide. He dyed this rawhide. His number three level had three colors, and often the reins had silver ferrules between them, and they were his top-of-the-line show things. So these are kind of in between. He wrote two books, and they often come as a set. And the interesting thing also you have is this is a drawing and a letter he did of how to tie a hackamore. And the hackamore is the first stage of training a California horse. So you got a really neat collection here. Can you tell me when the reins and the hobbles were made, and the letter?
GUEST: I was told that they were made about 1955.
APPRAISER: He was honored as a master artisan by the National Endowment for the Arts in the '80s. These pieces, if they were for sale at an auction, you're probably $4,000 to $6,000 for the reins.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: Probably around $2,000 to $3,000 for the--
GUEST: The hobbles?
APPRAISER: The hobbles. The book's worth about $200.
GUEST: Oh, my gosh.
APPRAISER: And the letter's probably worth $200.
GUEST: Oh, wow.
APPRAISER: This stuff is highly collected. For this grouping $7,000 to $10,000.
GUEST: Wow. Well, it's very sentimental to me, so it's not going anywhere.
APPRAISER: I bet.
