Pleased to meet you
Rachel Owner and Crafter.
Say the word ‘Leather’ and most people think of handbags, jackets, and shoes. It has a set place in our minds. There’s a strange aura about it. It’s seen to be traditional, perhaps old fashioned, fast being replaced by ‘Faux’ plastic which lasts about a week.
For thousands of years the poor and wealthy have used leather. It’s qualities have endured the test of time. It can be useful and beautiful. It’s also strong, versatile, delicate, long-lasting. Our ancestors wore it, lived under it, painted their art on it. Let’s face it, leather is part of who we are.
For a while it seemed to vanish like old furniture but then in the nineteen fifties it resurfaced on the backs of the young, resurrected with rock and roll. It got kinky in the sixties and faded away again in the seventies. But it never dies. It’s always somewhere, in the background, waiting.
I see leather as a blank canvas, a texture closer to wood or metal, and like all natural materials, it has a life, a connection, a history.
I’m from Oz. I came out of the Blue Mountains. I’m from this land because I had to be. The name of a place doesn’t matter. What matters is spirit. Plenty of that around here. This land is about things that last. The earth, the natural people, the wilderness. My love of leather is a part of that.
I’ve been learning about leather for a few years. Thirty or so. I’m only just starting. What I’ve found is that if you love something enough it starts to speak to you. Then you have to spend the rest of your life learning a bit more.