Horace Thomas & Shawn Thomas

I’ve been a full time, self-employed leather smith for thirty-nine years and my son has been a part of the business since he was two months old. We have been working together full time for the past seven years with each of us doing almost all of the necessary tasks of a creative leather studio. Currently we tend to divide the work into areas that each of us enjoys most. I do more of the actual creation and fabrication, and Shawn likes to do more of the selling and traveling. Much of the time we both meet in the middle and we do everything and anything that we need to do to make a humble but happy living. All the leatherwork you see in our art show booth is the result of my work and my son ShawnŠ—Ès work in our own studio. My personal favorite job is using architectural design methods to build unique shapes into practical leather bags. Recently I developed a way of layering and cutting leather using miter techniques. This enables me to build shapes with compound curves that have never been done by any leather smith. Currently I am also having great fun discovering and developing a contemporary process for transferring my original artwork permanently onto leather. I still make basic belts and practical, small leather articles and am happiest when I am cutting, shaping, dying and finishing a great smelling piece of cowhide into a functional, well crafted object. Together, my son and I have maintained a creative, self-employed lifestyle that allows us freedom of self-expression and determination. Both of us are capable of earning more money in more structured jobs but both of us have chosen independence over wealth. Too bad we cannot have both, but as they say, “you’ll never get rich working with your hands”. Perhaps our riches can be measured in independence and self-expression and not dollars. We think that’s a good kind of wealth.