Michael Anthony · History

History

Michael Anthony Carnacchi is a bootmaker, working under the name Michael Anthony, in Sebastopol, California. His own website says he is a Detroit native who came west on a Harley-Davidson in 1987 and learned bootmaking from Jack Reed of Burnet, Texas; he runs a one-man shop where he makes an entire boot, including the stitching, one pair at a time. A Robb Report note reprinted on his site (1 June 2002) places the shop on North Main Street in Sebastopol under the name Apple Cobbler.

Illume (15 October 2018) reports that a copy of Beard’s The Cowboy Boot Book sent him to Reed’s one-man shop in Burnet; Reed at first refused to teach him, but later taught him fit, pattern-making, and boot building on visits that often coincided with the Boot and Saddlemaker Round Up in Brownwood.