Learn Leathercraft With Confidence

Fair point. We wanted to make sure that there was an accessible entry point into leatherwork, regardless of what led you to be interested. That said, there's quite a bit of content on this site, which can be a little overwhelming to know where to start. If there's nothing that immediately piques your interest on the home page, head to the "Learn" tab at the very top. That will always take you to a list of all the guides we have available, as well as to other websites that offer good information.

Learnleathercraft.com was created with two goals in mind. First and foremost, we wanted to create a neutral starting point for those interested in learning leathercraft; we've joked that it's the Demilitarized Zone of leathercraft. But secondly, we recognized that many leather artists aren't interested in being web masters and marketers, but their videos, patterns, and books still have value to the larger leathercraft community, and they should be compensated fairly for their expertise.

In most cases, anything you purchase on LearnLeathercraft.com is owned by the artist or their families, in which case they directly get 50% of every sale that is made. The other 50% goes towards maintaining the website, investing in marketing their products, making donations to initiatives that grow the industry, and (yes) even compensating the site owner a little bit.

That said, our goal is fairness and transparency. We recognize that the only way for leather artists to make a living doing what they love is to be able to financially support themselves. Every purchase you make on this site helps support an artist in doing what they love.

We'd love to talk to you to see if it's a good fit! Reach out via our "Contact" link in the footer. Because our mission is to help set leatherworkers who are seeking information up for success, we do vet all of the material that is hosted on the site. Many of the artists you'll see on the site are well-known leatherworkers, historical figures, and award-winning artists. But you'll also find people who are relatively new to leathercraft, but they have a unique approach or expertise in a very specific area. We don't guarantee that we'll host everything offered, but we would be glad to have a conversation at least.

Absolutely, and we'd be honored to have that discussion! Reach out via our "Contact" link in the footer. Much of the legacy content you'll find on the site was made available in partnership with families who inherited dad's or grandpa's leatherworking "stuff," and they don't know what to do with it.

When we have these conversations, we always start by asking what is important to the family. Usually, it's that they want to make sure their relative's legacy stays alive and that their spouse or daughter/son has a bit of passive income to help them in retirement.

We have some very simple-to-understand written agreements that we can go through together to discuss what makes the most sense for the family. In some cases, the family owned the intellectual property, but didn't own copies of the materials. In these instances, we have worked together to find copies either through the online communities or through sites like ebay, get them digitized, and make them available as digital products.