Aussie Leathercrafters is a group made up of more than 7000 people today, but how did it begin?
Silvia Guerrera, member of the group, came into the studio today and shared a little about the history of the group. ‘To be honest, the very beginning concept was a fellow and his grandson, playing around with making up a Facebook page, which was Ron Evans. Just encouraging Leatherworkers to join because we’re all little leather community… he just started that up a few years ago… And from a few members, women, we’re now at seven and a half thousand members across Australia.’
Aussie Leathercrafters really brings the community together. ‘Everyone helps each other out. And you know, you got any questions, you can ask each other and we all show our work’, Silvia says. The group makes a large variety of leather items, such as handbags, dog collars, belts, wallets, jackets and more. ‘There’s lots of different leathers, a very diverse medium, there’s so many things you can do with it, you can mould it, you can plot it, you can stamp it, you can carve it, many, many ways to go. So there’s a lot of ways you can show your art form on leather’, explains Silvia.
If you were lucky enough to check out the leatherworks demonstrations, you may have been able to stamp your own piece of leather. The activity is designed for kids, who created key tags for school. With up to 20 mallets at a time, it was a busy and noisy scene, but the kids loved it!
Silvia’s highlight of the show was seeing over 1000 children come and interact at the stall. ‘Even if we entice just one child, out of all of those children to embrace leather work, then our job is done’… with ‘the younger generation having a go at this and falling in love with it like we do, then that’s that’s really what we want’.
If you would like to learn more about leathercraft and try it out yourself, head to the Aussie Leathercrafters page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/aussieleathercrafters. Let’s make more leather together!
