I have been looking for classic leather working tool stamp patterns. A lot of patterns these days show barbed wire and Texas style stars. Fortunately I found a catalog of leatherworking tools from 1880. Steven Shepherd, was kind enough to provide it for Gary Roberts’ Toolemera Press to provide it for us to read.
The reason why I have been trying to find an older listing, I want to make my own unique set. Stamps help to reduce the effort of leather carving. They allow areas to be filled and consistent and complementary patterns to be added with greater ease. The do have a bit of a Bob Ross quality to them. While allowing an artist to quickly produce the basics with greater ease, stamps can lead to a sameness.
The experiment I want to try is to make functionally the same stamps, but artistically very different stamps. I am curious to see if the basic stamps that we use are perfected, evolved forms or functional forms that could have been different if the original artist had a different style. They are probably somewhere between, and if that is the case, then there may still be room for innovation.
Bob
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And furthermore, the original PDF was missing a whole bunch of pages. This oversight has been corrected. The current leather tools PDF is the whole deal and nothing but the whole deal. I have an Osborne catalog around somewhere that really should join this one. It’s high time leather had it’s day. After all, my first job was working in a small leather mfg shop in off Houston St. in New York City round about 35 years ago.
Gary