Meet the Maker

Growing up as the son of a machinist / mechanic, I lived in a household where we never “called a guy” when something failed. It probably helped that we didn’t have the money to buy a replacement even if we wanted to. I learned the importance of knowing how to be self-sufficient.

However, as lazy and naive teenagers usually do, I questioned how hard I was going to need to work as an adult. I saw the long hours my father put in, not only during the week but also at a second job on the weekends and then spending evenings fixing things around the house. I never once saw him complain… but I know he came home dirty and tired, covered in grease with metal chips embedded in his shoes and blood blisters on his hands. I thought, “I need to get a cushy office job where I can sit in the a/c and never have to worry about all of that.” So that’s what I did.

Fast forward a decade or two, and I was miserable. Work meant pushing numbers around on a computer screen. I could work for hundreds of hours and ended up making nothing tangible — nothing I could be proud of. I realized that no matter how dirty and tired you are at the end of the day, at least you could point to something and say, “I made that, with my hands. Before I did it, It was nothing… and now it’s something.”

I first picked up leather working over twenty years ago when I was determined to make myself a quality leather holster. Back then, that meant books and VHS tapes and lots of trial and error. I also remember having to drive four hours round-trip to the closest store that sold leather supplies. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the tools or the money to make much progress. I did end up with a couple of holsters; and while I was proud of them, quite frankly they were pretty terrible.

Without a mentor, progress was slow; and lessons were learned the hard way through costly mistakes. However, I knew this was what was going to make me happy. Even all these years later, I still learn something new every week and probably always will. The best part is when I finish an item for someone, I could see that it was going to make them happy, too. There is joy when the right client meets the right item, and I know that I was the person that made it happen.

Whether you believe that it’s a product of mother nature or a gift from God, leather is an imperfect, organic, and beautiful raw material. It comes to us with brands and bug bites and marks where the animal rubbed against some barbed wire.

“Leather has already lived a life before I start, and I believe that I owe it to the animal to give it a new purpose by turning it into a blank canvas upon which you will scribe your daily life.”

It scuffs and scratches and burnishes. The parts where you interact with it will internalize your touch and use it to lighten or darken. Bag handles and straps will patina. Belts and wallets will mold around your body and take on a unique shape that only fits to you. Plastic and nylon and cavas and rubber don’t do this. Neither does cheap, coated “leather”. They wear out. Good, carefully selected leather wears in. No one is going to pass a cheap department store messenger bag, portfolio, or bible cover on to their kids.

If you’re the type of person who can appreciate that, hopefully you grant me the opportunity to build something for you. Then you can start writing YOUR history on it.