Little Shop On The Prairie

Tallgrass Leatherworks is (for now…) just me, Kate. I grew up surrounded by the tallgrass prairies, ranches and farmlands of Kansas, in the heart of the Great Plains. Some of my friends who live elsewhere say (in total sarcasm) there couldn’t be a more inspiring place to grow up… the highways running through Kansas are flat, and straight, and in most parts of the state the landscapes offer very little that most people would consider noteworthy. “There is that ball of twine in Cawker City that’s quite the wonder, and I actually saw a tree near McPherson!”

There are a few more “things” in Kansas that people might find worth visiting here to see — if you visit 8 Wonders of Kansas, you’ll find, at the very bottom of the list, the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in the Flint Hills of Northeastern Kansas. This truly is a wonder, but not one you can easily appreciate just flying past it on I-70. It brings forward to the present a treasure of geographical and biological history of the Great Plains, and possesses an astounding diversity and abundance of symbiotic life. The sheer beauty of it can only be seen by getting out of your car and walking the trails. What we have now is just a tiny sample of the vast prairies that once thrived here.

There is also a lot to Kansas that is more cultural in nature. Influences from my immersion in urban and rural cultural traditions unique to Kansas, as well as my longtime interests in art history and design have provided much of the inspiration for my work with leather. In this world of the Internet, online forums, and social media, I’ve also enjoyed ample access to the work and teachings of many fine leather artisans, some of whom have become good friends.

I was introduced to working with leather as a child by my dad who was a leather craft hobbyist. I dabbled in it enough to develop a fascination for the unique characteristics of leather as a construction material for clothing, personal accessories, home decor, and more, but also as an artistic medium. But I ended up putting it aside for a spell to pursue other activities competing for my attention.

In 2002, while attending the Smoky Hill River Festival in Salina, Kansas, I stumbled onto the booth of a leatherworker named Ron Musser, who specialized in copiously tooled leather game boards. Being a board game enthusiast, seeing his work abruptly awakened my sleeping affinity with leather work. Thus began an obsession with developing my own designs for leather game boards.

I would have been content to keep specializing in game boards, but it wasn’t long before I began to notice a growing pile of perfectly good smaller pieces of leather left over from the numerous sides of veg-tanned leather after cutting out the leather tops for my game boards. That led me to branching out into designing and making smaller items, such as clocks, book covers, billfolds, and various other home decor and personal accessories to put those smaller pieces to good use.

What You’ll Find Here

Now that I’m retired from my main occupation as a software engineer, after a long absence, I have returned to doing leather work under a new brand and business model. My focus now is less on making and selling the same finished leather work over and over, and more on producing new designs. Most of my designs will be published as artwork patterns, cutting/construction patterns, cutting templates, and produced as kits for other people doing leather work to use. It’s my way of giving back to a leatherworker community that so generously supported my own development as a leather artisan.

But there will still usually be a variety of finished leather goods for sale. After all, no design can be considered complete without actually making something from the pattern to cull out any weaknesses or mistakes in that design (either visual or structural). Besides, my pattern publications need to be illustrated with images showing examples of the completed work. And once I’ve made the item, it’s going to need a new home! So most finished leather items are being offered in single short runs or “one-offs.” Once all of a particular item is sold out, that item may or may not be re-stocked — it depends on the demand for specific items. They will otherwise be replaced with newer items.

The project kits, pattern and artwork publications, templates, and other tools for making things with leather will be kept stocked indefinitely.

So whether you’re looking for designer original hand-made items to purchase that are made with genuine, high grade leather, or if you are a leatherworker in search of new patterns or other aids to use for your own leather work, there’s something here for everyone.

If you’d like to check out work that I’ve done in the past — and also catch some glimpses of what the future might hold for Tallgrass — see my Gallery page for a photo history of the work I’ve done with leather. If you see something there that gives you ideas for future work you would like to see, feel free to squirt me a message from my Contact Me page.

Cheers! ~Kate