'Walk like an Egyptian'

Aaand ... it all about Ankh's & Scarabs and sweet, sweet sunshine! This is a labour of love I am about to undertake. I am off to Cape Town next month, for a whole month and there is a table awaiting me at a Market nearby where I will be staying. Needs must always be making a plan for survival & beyond. I made the pattern, using old cereal boxes, recycling of the first degree! I have cut out all the pattern pieces from Vegetable tanned Cowhide. I have included some inside pockets, from suede. This is a process that comes from very much scribbled beginnings that go like this ...

The next part is the hard part, I have to punch all the holes, with a hand punch. I have a pair of kid gloves (I kid you not!) with the tips of the fingers cut off, it is the only way to cut down on the blistering of my poor hands. Then I must stitch it all together, also by hand.

Winter is coming!

I am sitting wrapped in a blanket, there is surely snow on the Berg, the wind is chillsome, though the sun is shining here at the Seaside. It is a good day to stream Mad Men methinks & punch my way through all the many pieces that make up this bag.

So, starting with a blank piece of leather the next task is to draw this design onto the leather. I then immerse the leather in water until all the bubbles are gone, this saturates it properly. One then lays the leather on a piece of natural fabric until the shine of the water is totally absorbed, then begins the tooling of the design. I draw it on with pencil and then using my engraver/Dremel I draw the design onto the Leather. Depending on the angle of approach, another dimension is added to the leather. I love this part.

My bags, when they are done, are totally one-of-a-kind, never to be repeated, one-off originals! If an order is placed I am either given carte blanche to do a design of my liking, naturally considering the character of said being, or a picture of the design which the person wants transfered onto the leather. I would change a fee to draw a design provided, as this involves copying another's artwork, which is time consuming and not always easy. In my experience, of 40 odd years of working with leather, people are mostly unable to see what one envisages as an interpretation of their order, unless one does a sketch or has an example that they can see physically.

This is an example of a bag where I was given carte blanche with the design.