Where creativity and metal converge, the outdoors comes alive in the hands of Mark Goodwin. His buckles are crafted to endure, carrying a sense of timelessness from the moment they are forged.
Story by Cara Clark, Photos by Brit Huckabay
The first thing you notice about Dr. Mark Goodwin isn’t the metal. It’s patience. In a world of speed and polish, his belt buckles demonstrate a steadfast refusal to be hurried. They look as though they have already served a lifetime, each one burnished with intention and each surface holding a story. The sensibility behind the hand-forged buckles of Tyger Forge did not originate at a workbench, but instead took shape in a much less obvious place, beginning with an absence that needed to be filled. It was to complement Mark's kilt, and nothing on the market paid adequate tribute.
“Everything I found was chrome and mass-produced overseas, and it just wouldn’t do, so I decided I’d make my own,” Mark explains.
It was a matter-of-fact decision that unfolded into artistry. The first piece was simple, a piece of red jasper set in metal, riveted by hand, and stamped with his initials. It was never intended to become a business. It existed only to solve a practical problem, but craftsmanship has a way of drawing attention, whether it is meant to or not. This buckle, forged on Florida’s Forgotten Coast in the idyllic town of Apalachicola, was something others wanted.
“I posted a couple of pictures, and before long people started asking if they could buy one, so I ended up making quite a few and selling them in places like Japan, Europe, South America, and New Zealand, and that was kind of fun,” says Mark. He and his wife divide their time between Florida and Georgia.
What followed was not rapid expansion, but something quieter and more organic, as word of mouth spread and a small community began to form around objects that felt personal and considered. The name of that growing body of work came about in much the same way, rooted in place and memory rather than strategy.
“We have a log cabin up in Tiger, Georgia, and years ago, the mountain was called Tyger Mountain. That’s really where the name came from,” says the retired veterinary pathologist. “Everything is made one at a time, and I don’t have employees, and I don’t use any kind of automation.”
The Discipline of Restraint
Tyger Forge buckles feel grounded and enduring, which is fitting for work that resists trend and favors longevity. The work preserves something increasingly rare: a direct connection between the maker and the person who eventually wears the piece, allowing each buckle to carry not only a design but also a series of small, deliberate choices about material, finish, and restraint. Long before metal entered the picture, however, there was another life entirely, one shaped by science and years of academic pursuit.
“I was an undergraduate studying to be a veterinarian, and I was admitted to veterinary school, and after I graduated, I practiced small animal medicine for two years,” Mark recalls. “I knew I wasn’t going to be able to borrow the money or have the capital to start my own practice, so I decided my interests were really more on the pathology side of medicine. I went back to school, earned a PhD in veterinary pathology, and picked up a master’s degree along the way. I wound up with four college degrees after my parents told me, ‘You’ll never make it through college.’”
That persistence was not just self-generated but also inherited, shaped by a father who understood limitations firsthand and chose not to accept them.
“Dad’s parents were cotton sharecroppers, and he said one day he realized that if he didn’t leave, that was going to be his life, too, so he made the decision right then that he was going to leave,” Mark says.
What followed in his father’s life was its own unlikely progression through higher education, supported by whatever work was necessary to stay afloat, and that example quietly informed Mark’s path, reinforcing a belief in steady effort and self-direction. The tools changed, but the underlying discipline remained the same. The microscope gave way to metal, and diagnosis became design, yet in both cases, the work depended on attention to detail balanced by a sense of restraint.
Mark brings the same meticulous hand to forging belt buckles as he does to tying flies — precision honed by a retired pathologist, guided always by the eye of an artist.
That restraint continues to define Mark’s craftsmanship with buckles that feel composed and intentional. He works with yellow bronze, copper, brass, and Britannia pewter, choosing materials not for immediate brightness but for the way they age over time, allowing the surface to develop character rather than chasing a polished finish.
“But most of what I do, I try to have it be tarnished on purpose for two reasons, because number one it’s going to tarnish eventually anyway, and number two I just think it looks better since it has more character when it carries that patina, and the worst thing you can do to an antique is strip it and remove all that age.”
There is a broader philosophy embedded in that approach, one that reflects both his scientific background and his connection to the outdoors, where overworking something often diminishes its effectiveness rather than improving it.
“There’s an old adage among fly tiers that you should never tie a fly so precisely that it gives a fish a reason to refuse it,” Mark says. “It might look so much like a mayfly but not quite right, so really you just want to make it look buggy. If it looks buggy, it looks edible.”
Where Craft Meets the Wild
His connection to the outdoors runs parallel to his professional life and stretches back to childhood, when time spent in the field was less about instruction and more about observation. That early exposure gradually expanded into fly fishing and travel, eventually becoming a consistent rhythm that balanced his years in pathology with time spent outside.
“I started hunting when my dad went, and I’d just go along with him for deer hunting or squirrel hunting, and I was too young to carry a gun at the time, but that’s really where it all started,” Mark says. “I was fortunate that my professional career took me around the globe, and most of the time when I traveled, I would either take a shotgun or fishing gear with me.”
On one trip during the early days of peacock bass exploration, that instinct for movement and curiosity took him into the Amazon basin, well before it became a recognized destination for sport fishing. A Time magazine reporter and photographer were along for the adventure in the early ’90s.
“We were hauling a 22-foot boat over a fallen tree to get into a lagoon where nobody had been fishing before, and that’s where the best fishing was,” Mark says. That iconic image of the boat being carried through the wilderness made it into the magazine.
Experiences like that do not appear directly in his designs, but they shape the sensibility behind them, reinforcing values like durability, balance, and function. As his work evolved, some of his most meaningful pieces became less personal and more communal, carrying shared memory rather than individual expression.
“I created a buckle for my veterinary class of 1978, and my goal was to get everybody’s name on the back of that buckle,” he says. “The hardest part was making the model and figuring out how to get all 86 names on there where one could actually read them. It worked, but there was no room left over.”
What sounded straightforward turned into a meticulous process that required careful planning to ensure every name from the vet school graduation remained legible. He did it.
On many of Mark’s sporting designs, especially those centered on bird dogs, the reverse side becomes a space for words as well as form.
“On the back, if it’s a quail or a pheasant, it’ll have a quotation that relates to bird hunting, and if it’s a fish, then it’ll have a different quotation that fits that subject.”
It is a small detail that often goes unnoticed, but for those who take the time to look, it transforms the object from purely functional to something more meaningful. His commissioned work has expanded into bulk orders for ranches, universities, and small groups that want objects reflecting a communal identity without losing individuality.
“For example, I have done four buckles for Brush Creek Ranch in Wyoming,” he says. “They’re all different, but they’re all Brush Creek Ranch buckles. They’ll order maybe 25 or 50 at a time, which carries them through the season.”
He tends to favor those kinds of relationships because they allow for a more direct and personal exchange.
“I really like working with smaller groups or even just a couple of individuals, because it’s a lot more personal than dealing with a big company,” he says. “I’ve been at a point where I had more than I could handle, and it was cutting into everything else I wanted to do. It just became too much.”
Mark dialed it back. Now the scale is intentional, allowing space for both work and the life that surrounds it. While the buckles established his reputation, his web belts reflect a different kind of problem-solving, one rooted in repeated use and practical frustration.
“I like web belts when I’m hunting or fishing, because I don’t like leather when it gets wet and sweaty, but those slide buckles you see everywhere always slip, and over the course of a day I’d find myself adjusting my belt three or four, maybe more,” Mark says.
That frustration led to experimentation and eventually to a solution that prioritized reliability above all else. Even in describing it, there is a sense of quiet satisfaction in how straightforward the solution turned out to be.
“I finally thought this is crazy and there has to be a better way, so with my GatorGrip© design, you feed the strap through, and it clamps down with teeth,” Mark says. “The harder you pull, the more it bites, so you really can’t pull it apart. I’ve joked that I could hook it to my boat and tow it down the street, and it won’t slip, and it won’t open no matter what you do to it.”
Material choices remain just as important in other parts of his work. After years of searching, he settled on full-grain water buffalo leather to partner with his traditional buckle because of its strength and integrity.
“Full grain is the whole thickness, so it is not split, stretched, processed, or glued, and the best leather in the world. It comes from water buffalo.”
The same philosophy carries through, beginning with something real and resisting the urge to overwork it. Occasionally, the work proves itself in ways that cannot be anticipated at the design stage, revealing its durability through circumstance rather than intention, such as when one customer wore his new buckle to the range.
“My customer wrote and told me he was shooting and had a ricochet come back and hit the belt buckle, so he lived to tell about it,” Mark says.
Stories like that remain understated, much like the objects themselves, which do not rely on embellishment to justify their existence. Throughout the entire creative process, there is a consistent sense of respect, directed toward materials, toward tradition, and toward the people who choose to wear his work. For Mark, the meaning of that tribute extends beyond appearance and into process, longevity, and use, reflecting a belief that value is determined over time rather than at first glance. His designs are simply trying to be true, and through that effort, they endure.
