By Hannah Barricks
Photography by Crystal Wise
Denton is sunny in the summer. Temperatures aren’t oppressive yet, thanks to the area’s long wet season, and visitors seem to enjoy the weather. Some sit at cafe tables and benches along the Historic Denton Square, sharing the sidewalk with shoppers and narrowing their shoulders to permit their fellow pedestrians passage. Around the corner, on East Hickory, leasable office space sits where a rodeo man and leather craftsman named Weldon Burgoon opened Weldon’s Saddle Shop nearly 70 years ago. The store and its founder have since passed, but those left behind still remember them, and none so well as the owner’s grandson and fellow leather craftsman, Clint Wilkinson. Wilkinson has a store, too, Wilkinson’s Fine Goods, so close to the other that they share walls.
The family sticks together, and since a distant relative of both men staked his claim in Denton, Texas, after the Civil War, that’s where they stayed. Wilkinson says he left home, too, in search of his destiny, and at first, it’s a hard sell. He seems too well-suited to the family business. Even the way he leans on the counter mirrors a watercolor painting of his grandfather in a frame behind him. He’s where he needs to be, and at the moment, he’s discussing designer handbags with customers, and he knows his stuff. It’s another hard sell from the salt-and-pepper cowboy, but it’s real. Wilkinson admires fine craftsmanship of any kind and pulls a bag he made of alligator skin from a dust cover for the room to inspect. The bag is the color of iron, too dark to be grey but too smoky for black. Wilkinson says that even though the alligator was the largest he’d ever seen, he still worried he wouldn’t have enough material to finish the bag.
“The skin is incredibly strong,” he assures. “But weak here.”
His finger traces along the flexible webbing that runs between plates of hardened bone. The area would often rip during construction, causing him to begin again, but Wilkinson doesn’t furrow his brow while remembering it; he liked the challenge.
“Besides,” his assistant Charlie Talkington explains. “No skin is perfect.”
Talkington is Wilkinson’s only apprentice, winning the title after “wearing” Wilkinson down, but they both laugh at the notion. The two speak the same language and share ideas about perfection.
Wilkinson doesn’t shy away from scars, least of all his own, and is familiar with the Japanese art of Wabi Sabi, where artists seal cracks in pottery with gold.
Wilkinson jokes that his cracks must have formed at birth because he’s always felt a little wild. At a young age, he latched onto motocross after denouncing a future of boredom at his grandfather’s store. The boy chased adrenaline, earning a pro card in a sport built for jockeys as a future six-foot-four man. But, an accident during practice that ended his close friend’s life changed everything.
“After that, I stepped away,” he says. “It just didn’t feel right anymore.”
The then 25-year-old pivoted, using his knack for graphic design and marketing to co-found the online publication Vurbmoto with a small group of like-minded friends. They were the first to bring same-day race coverage and authentic storytelling to the motocross world, eventually collaborating with brands like Red Bull; however, the pace took a toll.
Wilkinson had his first panic attack. The high-stress work and constant pressure had caught up with him.
He returned home — to family, to stillness, and eventually, to leather.
In 2013, Wilkinson launched Bell and Oak, creating simple, high-quality leather goods that resonated with the new “hipster” generation invading Fort Worth and every farmer’s market within a 50-mile radius.
“I was so confident in my ability to make nothing into something,” he says.
So, Instagram became his showroom and minimalism his aesthetic. He took what he learned at Vurb and started gaining followers quickly. However, his big break came with a contract from the George W. Bush Presidential Library, which required him to create ten different leather items for the facility. Suddenly, his work was in the national spotlight, and his newest customers knew him by name, not as Bell and Oak.
“I’ve heard plenty of people say I have big boots to fill,” he says. “Well, I’m building my own boots.”
And when the Weldon Saddle Shop closed its doors in 2017, Wilkinson opened his. He moved into a space next door and put his name on the front. The new brand, Wilkinson, offered custom, high-end western leather goods, one appointment at a time.
But the isolation of studio work brought back his old friend, anxiety. Suddenly, the boring store from his childhood, where his grandfather would lean and talk for hours, sounded like relief. He began stocking heritage brands like Filson and Finoglio, which share his standards for quality, and hosting WFG Sessions, an acronym for Wilkinson’s Fine Goods, showcasing the music, local beer, and handmade goods produced by the other small businesses of his hometown. It’s where he belongs: a seasoned veteran of the arts and business who knows what entrepreneurs go through. What he isn’t too proud to admit, he still goes through.
“I can put too much pressure on myself,” he admits.
But he’ll take the creative freedom with the lows of owning a business every time because he’s an artist, and Wilkinson never needed that to be easy.
These days, the craftsman seems to have sown most of his barley, with a family of his own, including two children, Dylan and Autumn. He revived Bell and Oak as a locally manufactured wholesale brand that easily ships to boutiques nationwide, offering a counterbalance to the customizable Wilkinson brand.
Interested customers can find many pieces online; after all, it’s no secret that Wilkinson is a wiz with web design, but if you can, visit the store in Denton. It’s a jewelry box containing art, photographs, rodeo history, and, of course, leather. Wilkinson will be there. Ask him to tell you a story. He’ll lean on the counter the way he does, the same as his grandfather behind him, but he makes it his own.
