Thanks for checking out my studio, I wanted to chat a little more about me and why I make horses. .
I am a creative and I love making things with my hands, my day job has been working in commercial design, which I love, but I wanted to do something that satisfied my urge to make things. About 10 years ago (2014) I started making phone cases in leather as iPhone leather cases were, in my view, overly expensive for the type I wanted and I thought I could make one myself. The cases certainly lasted longer than the iPhones did and I (and many family friends) were very pleased with them. I still make them today every time I get a new phone – you can check them out here on my other leather website – which I will be integrating soon.
Hand made leather phone cases – order here
Over the 10 years and making many leather accessories one naturally gets good at working with the material, confident you can create what you want. I still hand cut the leather pattern shapes, skive the edges to reduce the joined thickness and hand punch and saddle stitch the edges together. This all makes for a much better and stronger stitched area (any machine stitch is much weaker), which in turn means it will last longer.
I have often made 3D animal sculptures out of chicken wire and papier mache. I find it easy to think in 3D and imagine in my mind how I can transform a flat piece of wire into a 3D animal.
I studied technical illustration at college and we mainly created 3D exploded views of engines, diggers, mechanical objects and I could easily draw these without the use of 3D grids. Also, my first job was a special effects animator in the ground breaking film “Who framed Roger Rabbit” – I drew for 8 hours a day creating the shadows and sparkles of the main characters. When we worked on difficult scenes, where a character would be propelled in the air for example, my technical director would ask for my help to resolve the resulting shadows cast over the floor and walls as they were flying through the air based on the scene lighting. I found this quite easy. Of course 3D software makes this easy now, but at the time nothing was available to help, which is probably why the film won an Oscar for the special effects.
Now I live in a lovely area of Sweden, Dalarna, which is the home of the Dalahäst. We have many of these wooden horses and I started thinking, could I make a leather version? I checked online and I could not find any examples of someone doing this before, so I decided to give it a go. Pretty soon I discovered it is really, really difficult to make them, it took me 6 months, maybe longer, to make one I was reasonably happy with and I thought it would work. I then spent a further 3 months perfecting the pattern and the technique, it needs hand moulding to get the proper shapes, and the stitching is quite awkward in certain areas, you cannot just clamp the leather to aid in the stitch.
Beautiful Dalarna, Sweden. A view over the village where I live.
I decided at the very beginning I would serial number the horses, initially to see the progression or mark the development but later once the design was finished, it also seemed a good idea to enhance the individuality and uniqueness of them. I am also going to create a gallery of their ‘homes’, so if you buy one please send a picture of where you place it, where it resides, and I will add it.
Unique branding stamp – every horse has a number.
I hope to add different colour leathers and maybe offer personalisation in the future so please come back and take a look or sign up to my mailing list to be notified.
With all the horses I offer a free repair service, should any ‘loving’ be too much, but from experience of my leather accessories and phones they are very resilient.