Carving A Niche

Tom Dean has spent his entire life fly-fishing Montana’s backwaters and big waters, creeks and ponds, but it was only recently that he turned his love of sight fishing and fly casting into a full-time enterprise. After Dean retired from a sales and marketing career more than three years ago, he sought a new profession. Fiddling with a woodworking tool in his garage, he began using it to sculpt nature motifs in pine. It started with a dragonfly for his young son, but a wall-mounted, fish-shaped coat hanger soon followed. That was Dean’s first wood-carved fish. "From there," he says, "I became intensely passionate to see if I could do a better one."

Now, Dean is the sole proprietor of Milo Creek Carvings (www.milocreekcarvings.com), a company named in honor of his grandfather. Using a bevy of tools, the 50-year-old takes blocks of exotic wood and creates lifelike underwater scenes depicting trout and other fish in their natural habitats. As he explains, it’s a connection to sight fishing and the excitement that anglers get watching a fish approaching a well-presented fly that attracts them to his sculptures. "The anticipation of any sized fish coming up for a fly or a bug, and getting a fish on the end of the line—that’s the exhilaration with fly-fishing," Dean says. "These [sculptures] are a snapshot of that experience. It’s a moment in time."

As for the moment when Dean started this new phase in his professional life, he remembers the exact day: June 6, 2008. It’s a day when the lifelong fisherman and first-time artist says he "left corporate America and never looked back." And as he explains, the shift from working for someone else to working for himself brings new challenges and pressures, but they can be as motivating and liberating as they are sometimes daunting. "Once you believe in your confidence and you believe you can do this, it’s a whole new series of rules that come over you," he says. "It’s the rules of emotion and engagement."

Dean’s sculptures range from small scenes incorporating individual fish ($2,500 to $5,000) to large showpieces depicting numerous fish carved from various hardwoods ($25,000 and up). The largest piece that Dean has created measured 10 feet long, 5 feet deep, and 9 feet tall, and included 11 hand-carved fish, 117 cattails and reeds, two dragonflies, and one cleverly hidden frog. Made from an 1,800-pound slab of African bubinga wood, a hard wood native to the central forests of Mozambique, the piece also included bushels of streambed rocks native to Montana (as do all of Dean’s sculptures) and cost $100,000. Dean does not paint any of his carvings, which means he must rely on the natural patterns and colors of the various woods that he works with—woods that include Brazilian rosewood, Australian lacewood, South American cocobolo, and Malaysian teak, to name a few.

The Great Falls, Mont., native always is looking for ways to improve his work, and while he cannot predict what future pieces might be, he knows that his current pieces have evolved greatly from his first attempts three years ago. "I look back on those now and think they look very primitive," he says of his initial work. "There’s more fluid motion and action and detail to it now." —S.T.

Fast Footwear

According to Kevin Beard, prior to 1999, when Beard started his driving- shoe company Piloti (www.piloti.com) in Southern California, the driving-shoe industry lacked a shoe that offered proper cushioning and flexibility and a degree of styling that allowed drivers to make a statement when they stepped out of their cars and onto the track. "Prior to Piloti, car culture didn’t have a footwear brand," he says. "Enthusiasts either had race boots, which hadn’t advanced biomechanically in decades, or driving moccasins, which only provided one look and tended to be expensive and nonfunctional."

As a self-proclaimed gearhead and hot-rodder, Beard brought the right combination of experience and training to his venture. His love of cars and high-performance driving provided the focus, while his respect for auto racing’s most successful alumni, including Dan Gurney, Bruce McLaren, and Juan Manuel Fangio, delivered the inspiration. When it came to the skill needed to build a driving shoe that recast the form, Beard relied on more than a decade of work at notable footwear companies, the likes of which included Adidas, Reebok, and K-Swiss. A commitment to high-speed racing performance remains at the core of the brand—after all, the name Piloti means "racing drivers" in Italian—but as Beard often likes to say, "you don’t have to rip around a 32 percent banked turn at 200 mph to enjoy your Piloti driving shoes."

Of course, if that is your goal, Piloti’s product line includes shoes fit with the technology needed to tame the track. Utilizing his background in biomechanics and design, Beard builds into each shoe a patented Roll Control heel, as well as cushioning that allows for precise pedal feel, driving comfort, and quick heel-and-toe shifting. He also equips each shoe with a fire-resistant lining and accents the exteriors with tough, double-row stitching and an outer sole reminiscent of 1950s racing treads.

Piloti offers five models in a race professional line, each with a track-ready appearance. Alternatively, the brand’s race performance line offers the leather Tamburello, which combines aspects of Piloti’s professional series with aesthetics from the brand’s touring line. Named for the infamous curve at the Imola circuit in Italy, the Tamburello costs $125 and features a relaxed blend of suede, breathable mesh, and soft, tumbled full-grain leather, as well as unique stitching details. The lower portion of the shoe incorporates a variation of Beard’s heel technology, which results in a lower profile and a flexible forefoot. And with a customized insole, the Tamburello offers drivers a comfortable shoe for all-day driving. "It isn’t unusual for our customers to tell us that they have multiple pairs," Beard says. "They identify with Piloti like we identify with them." —K.P.

Shifting Gears

In 1958, Bernard Richards was born into a family of jewelers, although the family changed its focus to watchmaking by the time he reached his early teens. Shortly thereafter, Richards enrolled at horological and micromechanical schools in Paris. For the next few years he devoted himself to gemological research and later joined the family business to develop a series of clocks, watches, pens, and lighters for international luxury groups. In 1986, he founded the Bernard Richards Company, which specialized in the machining of components for the luxury industry. Finally, in 2003, after more than a decade working to produce machined components for other companies, Richards launched his own brand—Bernard Richards Manufacture (www.brm-manufacture.com)—and set out to create timepieces that stood out from the rest of the market.

Throughout Richards’ journey from jewelry to timepieces, his passion for motorsports remained a constant in his life, and it was that passion that Richards chose to integrate into his watches. Every distinguishable element of a BRM watch takes its design cues from recognizable automobile and motorcycle parts. For example, the case of the brand’s V12 reflects the piston of a car, the lugs convey the look of a racing shifter, and the hands on the watch dial resemble a racecar’s pedals. Also, because Richards is proficient with computer-aided machinery (about 30 machines make up the BRM factory), each piece is cut from a solid block of metal, regardless of whether that metal is aluminum, stainless steel, titanium, or rose gold.

BRM’s first timepiece, the GP44, was an automatic chronograph made from black and gray titanium and superfine stainless steel. From there, the company introduced the V12 with its piston-inspired case and soon unveiled numerous other styles and limited editions. Most recently, the company partnered with the Triplettes of Bonneville, a team that took a modified Renault 4 panel wagon to the Utah salt flats in an attempt to set new world speed records. The timepiece that emerged from that partnership, a limited-edition V6-44, which costs 7,200 euros (about $9,700), incorporates a lightened Precitime movement set within a skeleton case. Weighing just over 40 grams, it is the lightest automatic watch ever made. As Frederic Gasser, the president and CEO of BRM North America, explains, the watch could be even lighter, but specific materials were chosen to guarantee that it remained strong and water resistant. "That was a test-drive for us," Gasser says, "to see how people react to those kinds of designs."

The brand already is in tune with its customer base, allowing clients to customize their own watches, which can cost anywhere from $3,000 to $150,000, depending upon the desired movement and modifications. The bespoke program is possible only because BRM maintains a small operation and produces no more than 2,000 watches a year. Even with such personalized options in place, the brand still aims to push the envelope going forward, and as Gasser explains, that ambition is linked directly to the motorsports industry. "The specific details of the machine … you look in the engine and see all those details and you get ideas from that," he says. "And if you look at Formula One research or IndyCar research, everyone is looking for new components and new materials, and we’re always listening to that. We’re always trying to find some new material, but it needs to be connected to the motorsports industry." —S.T.