Bags
Range bags, totes, satchels and shoulder bags, cut and stitched to what they have to carry and hung with hardware built to take the weight.
See bags →Pollock Pines, California
Leather goods made one at a time, by hand
Handcrafted leather goods inspired by old-world craftsmanship, built with premium materials, timeless character, and a respect for honest tradition.
Stitched by hand
Saddle-stitched with two needles through every hole. It is slower than a machine and it fails better: one stitch at a time, not all at once.
Cut and finished here
One bench, one pair of hands, in Pollock Pines. Nothing is drop-shipped and nothing is finished somewhere else.
Made to the job
Sheaths fitted to the blade, belts cut to the wearer, pouches built for what actually goes in them. Most pieces here started as a commission.
The Shop
What comes off the bench
Seven things get made here regularly. Everything else is a commission, and most of these started as one.
Wallets and Card Cases
The pieces that get handled every day, and show it best. Cut, stitched and burnished one at a time, then carried until the leather takes the shape of whoever is carrying it.
See wallets & card cases →
Belts
Cut from a single strap, edged and finished by hand, and fitted with a buckle you can take off and move to the next one.
See belts →
Knife Sheaths and Tool Carriers
Made to the blade, not to a pattern book. Welted, stitched and burnished so the edge sits where it should and stays there.
See sheaths & tool carriers →
The Paul Bunyan Wedge Pouch
A felling-wedge pouch that rides on the belt, built heavy enough for the job and finished like something you would keep.
See the wedge pouch →
Slings
A shepherd’s sling, hand-stitched with braided cord. Made because people kept asking for one.
See slings →
Tooled Work and Small Goods
Cuffs, coasters and the small pieces that carry the hand tooling — basketweave fields, carved borders, and dyed and embossed panels.
See tooled & small goods →
A recent commission
A range bag, built around what goes in it
Olive-green suede and tan leather, brass buckles, saddle-stitched throughout, with a shoulder strap cut long enough to wear across the body. The inside is divided for boxes of shells and a set of ear defenders, which is the whole point of building one to order rather than buying one off a shelf.
The plate on the flap is tooled with the owner's name. That is a customer's name rather than a brand — the small round mark stamped beneath it is the workshop's own.
The bench
Slow on purpose
Hand stitching takes as long as it takes. The trade is that a hand-stitched seam fails one stitch at a time, where a machine lock-stitch can unzip along its whole length from a single cut thread.
Edges get burnished rather than painted, patterns get prototyped and thrown out, and pieces get remade until they work for the person who has to carry them.
“I forgot how meditative stitching by hand can be. Hours and hours of endless repetition only broken by the occasional finishing know then on to the next piece. You can lose yourself in thought.”
In person
Find it on a table, not a screen
The stand runs at the Thursday night market and the Saturday morning market. A stockist in Placerville, Spa-520, keeps a selection on display. Everything else is on Etsy.
“The most beautiful Italian leather by Montgomery Leather. The craftsmanship is AMAZING.”
Talk to the person who makes it
No sales desk and no order form to fight with. Call or text the workshop and you are speaking to the bench.