The initial concept for a cue design can come from virtually anywhere, but for the purpose of this exercise, I will pick a design that came to me from a picture I saw in a magazine.
I had been thinking about designing a series of cues based on the 50 states and this picture provide just the start I needed. I decided to start the "50 state series" with Texas.
The magazine I was looking at had several other Texas Ranger stars on the same page, but I picked this one because it seemed to have the most historical appeal.
Other objects to incorporate in the "Texas" design would certainly be a map of Texas, oil drilling rigs, cowboy boots, longhorns, cattle brands, barbed wire and of course, the "Yellow Rose of Texas".
Some years ago I had seen a pair of boots made in El Paso by Rocketbuster and liked the way they had interpeted an often used Texas theme. I thought it might also look good on a cue, so I decided to try to incorporate it also. The colors would be difficult, but perhaps I could use gold mother-of-pearl of even real gold. I will worry more about it later.
I started doing research on barbed wire to find a pattern that had the proper historical significance and learned that it had a well documented and colorful history. I finally settled on a style common to early Texas that would hopefully work well with the rest of the design.
Oil wells proved to be more of a problem however because what I really had in mind was an oil derrick. The temporary tower that is used to actually drill a well and then is removed. You often see these derrics used in Texas and Western designs and none are very attractive. So, I decided to take a little artistic license with the oil wells and try to incorporate them into a traditional part of cuemaking--the point. I decided that silver would be the logical choice for this part of the cue and tie in with the gold and silver I had in mind for the barbed wire.
That left the cattle brands to deal with. Again it turned out that there were so many that some selection had to be made. Conviently about the same time, a customer from Texas decided to purchass this cue and wanted to incorporate his families historic cattle brand. We also decided to include many of the other historic brands.
The initial concept for a cue design can come from virtually anywhere, but for the purpose of this exercise, I will pick a design that came to me from a picture I saw in a magazine.
I had been thinking about designing a series of cues based on the 50 states and this picture provide just the start I needed. I decided to start the "50 state series" with Texas.
