Shop Talk! July 2022

Since last month, I have had many chances to reflect on inevitable life changes. The end of another school year tends to do that to a mom. One of those life changes was becoming the mother of an adult and a high school graduate. Our oldest daughter, Ainsley Marie, turned 18 and graduated three days later. To say that I felt a myriad of emotion that week is a huge understatement. I found myself recalling the day she was born often. That traumatic day seemed like yesterday. My grandfather, who was my only neighbor growing up and one of my best friends, had suffered a massive stroke while on a Memorial Day camping trip with my dad and other members of our family. He had to be life flighted to the…

LYNN ASCRIZZI Lynn Ascrizzi is a freelance writer, artist, poet and home gardener who lives in a home that she and her husband, Joe, built in the woods in Freedom, Maine. In the past five years, she has written extensively for ShopTalk! Early on, she taught art and English in public schools and was senior editor, illustrator and art director for Farmstead, a national magazine for small farming and home gardening. Later, she was lifestyle editor, feature writer and syndicated columnist for Central Maine Newspapers. Her poems have been published in several journals and in two anthologies by Down East Books: “Take Heart: Poems From Maine,” (2013) and “Take Heart: More Poems From Maine,” (2016). LIISA ANDREASSEN Liisa Andreassen is the president of Write Away, Inc. (www.writeawayinc.com). She works with custom content publishers,…

CarveRite templates make hand tooling a breeze with raised pattern designs that you can imprint easily into damp tooling leather, using a simple two-step process! So convenient and so easy to use, you’ll feel like a pro in no time at all! Great for duplicating patterns on project after project! Our CarveRite Template Line offers many styles to choose from, such as belt, wallet, billfold, corner and border, to memory books, and photo album covers, etc. with pattern themes like florals, leaves, and vines, wildlife, and spiritual. Even stitching, and alphabets! www.springfieldleather.com…

Something new is happening at Booth & Company, a 150-year-old leather industry company. Ken Chapman, the company’s most recent owner, has turned over the reins to Linda Arnold, who also owns Jones & Naudin Leather, a glove manufacturer in upstate New York. Chapman has worked in tanneries since 1968, and knew the business inside and out, but decided it was time to step away. He knew Linda was the woman for the job. “I’ve known Ken since 1970, and he was our rep for foreign sources of untanned leather. I got to know him and we became friends,” Linda says. “I was honored when he offered to sell the company to me and I can only hope that I will be able to follow in his footsteps. He’s such a personable man.” There…

Educating the Next Generation of Creatives by Re-Shaping our Fashion Futures. • Partnership aims to democratize education through a new discourse on fashion futures.• IoDF’s IRL x URL academy delivers a free digital futures and sustainability workshop, aiming to empower global students of tomorrow.• Industry innovation leads IoDF Co-Founders, Leanne Elliott Young and Cattytay will sit as judges at the global final. (31 May 2022): Institute of Digital Fashion are excited to announce their official partnership with Real Leather. Stay Different. International Student Design Competition 2022 (RLSD ‘22), bringing education into the future with digital skills. IoDF have a strong ethos of supporting the makers of our next generation with an aim to re-build, re-educate, and re-position the industry’s thinking into a new vernacular with innovation at the core. The project partnership with…

Readers of Shop Talk Magazine need no introduction to German leather artist Jurgen Volbach. On June 4 -5, Jurgen put on a workshop at Jim Linnell’s Elktracks Studio in Venus, Texas. Students came from around the United States to learn more about 3D leather embossing, an art that Jurgen is well known for. Jurgen is also popular as an instructor, because his class is easy to follow, and students at any level of expertise are able to participate. At this recent workshop, students were provided with all of the materials, and an excellent step by step pamphlet with instructions for creating a beautiful picture of two horses embracing. Even the picture was carefully chosen by Jurgen as one that was beautiful, but easier to get right because it only showed half…