Courier Bags

Late 2008 I’m starting to think about how to concisely carry some sketch books as I travel through Ecuador. I also wanted to be able to put a Leica M in with the books.

As a kid I did quite a bit of leather work making this and that with my guide through it being the OG Al Stohlman.  So I measured up the largest sketchbook I wanted to pack with me in Ecuador and made a bag to fit it, a couple other sketchbooks, Micron pens of course and the Leica.  I didn’t want a big bag, but a right sized bag.

I used a technique of soaking the leather in water and bending it into the shape I wanted.  When it dries it keeps that shape pretty well. 

For a fastening system I again turned back to my childhood.  Probably my most favorite book of all time is Ellsworth Jaeger’s “Wildwood Wisdom”.  This was a book that came to me through the mail as I belonged to a outdoor book club as a kid.  I have read, re-read and re-read Wildwood Wisdom countless times.  Written in 1945, it’s a collection of how the Native Americans and early frontier people did things..made birchbark boiling containers, anti-snow blindness goggles, tanning a deer skin, preserving fish over a smoky fire and thousands of other similar things.

I remembered one page devoted to leather buttons so I pull down my book and look it up..it turned out to be the perfect way to keep the bag closed.

The bag has been with me ever since….being field tested so to speak.  It’s flopped around in the back of pickups bouncing over crappy roads in Ecuador, used as a pillow in Portugal, a lunch sack in Spain. And last month...crazy wind blown hikes in the Conemarra in Ireland. It’s been with me on trips on Bart over to Berkeley and back, to bars in San Francisco, to Pho restaurants in the Mission.  It’s been rained on, sat on and spilled on and just now it’s getting a real nice patina.  There’s a history in it’s softness and sheen….it’s my history.

And as I went about my way, I would get stopped by people….they want to know where I got the bag and when I told them I had made it, they would have a look of dejection as they knew they couldn’t run to their local bespoke store and buy one for themselves.

But one time I was going to meet my daughter for lunch in the Mission District.  I bike over there and start to lock up my bike…there’s a couple guys standing outside of a newfashioned barber shop. One of them says that I need a haircut (this is right before leaving for Ireland).  I laugh and tell them my "I’m going to Ireland for a haircut" routine.  He spots my bag and asks where I got the bag…but this time he’s not satisfied with my answer of it’s a one of kind thing ….he begs me to make him one…just like the one I had slung over my shoulder….begs me.  Says he’s a barber at this shop and bring it him when I get it done.

And so I start to think about maybe making the bags for a wider audience.  My way, one at a time, each a bit different…a curve here sharper, a bigger there fastener.  I want my fingerprints all over each of them.

I am calling them Courier Bags…for taking your stuff around the world with you.  Not everything, just the important stuff.

See the new ones here  Paul Kirchner Studios

Google says there's an Al Stohlman museum