Sydney Craft Week
RESPONSE: Leather learning
Artists Katja Handt and Michele Elliot share their creative space at Five Islands Studios on Dharawal Country in Port Kembla. Katja is a set and costume designer/maker with a small leather atelier Katasche while Michele's artwork focuses on materiality and meaning. Both are participating in Sydney Craft Week 2024 with hands-on workshops focussed on sustainability.
Katja shows how to use marbling to transform leather into a beautiful key fob and bookmark, and her Handbag Spa workshop is about how to look after leather bags including leather care, repair and a care kit to take home.
In Michele’s Patch fix darn and stitch: upcycling and visible mending workshops, participants learn how to make their own upcycled scissor pouch using fabric scraps and simple embroidery, and how to save much-loved garments with visible mending using hand stitching and easy embroidery with colourful yarns.
You can also meet both artists at their Open Studio weekend, October 11-13.
How did you move from costume design into leatherware design?
Leathercraft started out as an extension of my costume work on feature films like Mad Max: Fury Road and The Chronicles of Narnia. During Covid, when all the theatres shut down for a while and my design work was on hold, I received a grant from Create NSW to upskill in traditional luxury leathercraft. And I have been practising that ever since!
How is leather to work with?
Leather is a wonderful material to work with: you can stitch it, mould it, sculpt it, dye it, marble it, the possibilities are endless. It is also one of the most sustainable materials we have (if sourced responsibly) and as an everyday object can last for decades (with the right care). Depending on the treatment it can be soft or hard, all without applying toxic chemicals, just by working the fibres.
Where do you source your sustainable vegetable-tanned cow and kangaroo leather from?
It is very important to me to know where my leather comes from and to be able to give insight of that to my clients. All my bovine and kangaroo leathers are a by-product of the meat industry (or fishery) and I try and source most of them from Australian tanneries.
However, I have also recently started to import leather from Italian tanneries that are part of a consortium of 19 tanneries that comply with the highest environmental and quality standards.
What do you enjoy about the marbling process?
Marbling is a lovely way to colour leather, you can choose the colours but there is a lot of experimenting and chance involved. The outcome is not predictable. It is also a non-toxic process and very fast.
What is the most important factor for leather care?
Understanding what your leather object needs. Different leathers require different products, but a good leather can last a long time. And don’t neglect the care, look after it from the start!
How have you responded to the SCW theme RESPONSE?
I like to think that my slow leathercraft practice is a sustainable response to the overwhelming fast fashion society we live in. It is also satisfying to know that I am preserving a heritage craft by practising it.
Workshops Marbling, Saturday 12 October 2pm – 4pm, $70; The Handbag Spa, Saturday 12 October, 10.30 – 1.30pm, $70; Open Studio Friday 11 October, 4-8 pm, Saturday 12 October, 10am – 4pm, Sunday 13 October, 10am – 4pm.