Jim Brainard

History

Jim Brainard is a custom bootmaker in Parker, Colorado, who runs J.B. Custom Leather. He started leatherwork in 1970 at age ten and began a repair apprenticeship at fourteen with Dave Hutchings, buying that repair business about five years later and running it for roughly thirty-five years before he began making boots himself.

According to a 2011 profile, the two met in 1974 at Parker Western Outfitters, where the work was saddles, resoles, and repair rather than building a boot start to finish. Brainard later ran Tanner Leather Repair, left that shop to a partner in 2000, and opened J.B. Custom Leather at his home in Parker.

Brainard says he did not start making boots until 2008, when his wife urged him to go back to Hutchings, who had taught him repair but not construction. Hutchings, by then working from home as Hutch's Custom Bootmakers, taught him a two-week basic course in which Brainard made his first two pairs, and remained available to him for the next ten years. Brainard's 2019 interview describes Hutchings as a third-generation bootmaker, a detail not repeated in the earlier profile.

Sources

• Jim Brainard interview, The Cowboy Bootmakers (25 April 2019)
• Colorado Community Media, “Boot makers craft art, friendship” (5 November 2011)
• Jennifer June, Bootmaking Schools, updated 28 April 2023