Scanning Around With Gene: Leather and Letters from Al Stohlman

Gene Gable

My father was such a boy scout. I’m sure he had a lot of merit badges, and when it came to craftiness and resourcefulness, there wasn’t much he couldn’t do or wouldn’t tackle. He built a boat, he made two guitars, he fixed clocks and picked locks and carved his own pipe. Among his many hobbies was leather-crafting.
Every so often you could expect a gift of his workmanship in the form of a customized belt, a billfold, or a unique case for one of your treasures. So it was with great delight I recently came upon my father’s leather-making supplies in a homemade wooden box of his own design.
It was there I discovered a series of books by the master leather-crafter and prolific author, Al Stohlman. These are a treasure of leather art, illustration and lettering. Everything on the complex pages of these over-sized booklets came from Stohlman’s hand, including all the text, borders and graphic elements. Click on any image for a larger version (which you’ll need to appreciate these).



Stohlman was born in 1919, died in 1998, and taught several generations of leather workers their craft. He designed many leather-working tools, sketched an endless number of patterns, and you can visit a museum dedicated to him in Ft. Worth, Texas. He was clearly my father’s inspiration.


As was the case with most of my father’s hobbies, at one point I took a stab at this one and crafted myself a belt. It was very crude but probably good enough to get a merit badge, had my father chosen to give them out.



Stohlman, on the other hand, was a master. You have to appreciate the intricate nature of such work, mostly done with a mallet and a stamping tool. His largest color piece, which is at the museum, measures 43″ x 27″. He and his wife Ann made custom saddles at their ranch in Canada.


My father’s work was sometimes very competent and at other times amateurish enough to be charming. You could always count on him making a leather gift personal, and he chose themes he knew you were interested in. He put rabbits on his dog Molly’s collar, for instance, because she had once chased them.


Al Stohlman picked up a yen for leather-working while stationed in New Guinea during World War II. He and his buddies fashioned leather goods using pocketknives and nails. His dream was once to illustrate Western novels, but he went the leather route instead and ended up illustrating his own books, which all have a heavy Western theme.



My dad’s modest leather-working tools were what you would probably call the “basics.” In addition to the great books and other patterns, he had stamps, punches, lacing, dyes, and cutting tools. Several half-done projects are in the bottom of the box, along with scraps of leather and various prototypes.



Every year the Tandy Leather Company bestows the Al Stohlman Achievement Award to a leathercrafter who has “demonstrated continued dedication to the craft, following the examples set by Al Stohlman.” You can see the work of the past winners at the museum, which I really want to go to.


But I’ll probably have to be content with the small museum of work my father gave me over the years. Unfortunately, I was unable to scan his better work, but I did find these two examples of my dad at his craft. The first is a checkbook holder, and then a set of patterns he drew for projects over the years, many of them copied from the Stohlman books.


My dad would have never won the Al Stohlman Achievement Award, but I’m proud of him nonetheless, and wish I could lose enough weight to wear some of those belts he gave me as a teenager.