Belt Buckles. Did you know we make belt buckles?


photo of a brass belt buckle depicting a topsail schooner sailboat

Older belt buckle with a more intricate boat – a topsail schooner

photo of a brass belt buckle depicting a leafless tree

Rectangular tree belt buckle.

Apart from a mention on the About the Studio page, we haven’t shown our belt buckles on the website, but I’ve just made up a couple of pages about them. More will be added soon. But yes, David has been making brass belt buckles since 1974, when he first got the oxyacetylene torch, and though their heyday was in the late ’70s and early ’80s, they have remained popular and we’ve continued to make them for our remaining leatherworkers. In fact, in the last six or eight years, they came back into style in a big way for a while, and our leatherworkers were ordering more steadily than they had for decades. Now a new generation is getting into leatherwork and we recently had a query from an old leathercraft shop now under new ownership – Paul Taylor Sandals of Asheville, NC – and have had other queries about them through our etsy shop recently, so we figured it was time to put more information on them online.

We intend to get more pictures on the page about older buckles, in case people find us by looking for information on a buckle they bought years ago, or inherited, or found at a vintage shop, or whatever. As always, we appreciate feedback on our pages, and of course we would love to hear from you if you have one of our belt buckles from long ago.

davidmbowman.com/buckles

photo of a brass belt buckle depicting a musical eighth note

Eighth note belt buckle

photo of brass belt buckle depicting a sailboat with spinnaker sail

Boat buckle with spinnaker

photo of a brass belt buckle depicting a sunset over a line of hills

Sunset – a classic style we no longer make

Been making bracelets

We have been making more bracelets to have a good selection for a shop’s order. I haven’t done many Tribal bracelets before, so I have been enjoying trying them out.

Ten tribal bracelets

The Tribal Bracelet is the freest of our foldformed bracelet styles. Tribal bracelets have a bolder style and larger visual presence than most of our other designs, and tend to be heavier, as well. They are rougher and less precise than some of our other styles, and tend to use more surface texture. But most important, they are a chance for us to play, unconstrained by any precise model. They are therefore much more distinct, one from the next, than our other styles. Above is a mixture of David’s and my pieces. Below are three of the ones I made last week.

 

 

 

A new bracelet style

A sheet of chaotically creaseformed copper David made some weeks ago gave me the idea for these bracelets. One is backed with silver, the other with brass. Future versions may use vermeil (silver with a layer of gold) for the backing. See more of our bracelets on our website.

Book Pins

Bookpins-manydscn1272

A whole batch of book pins has just been finished and is set out to be lacquered here.

spine belt buckle

Dscn3203-frame

Here is the foldform design we call Spine, made into a brass belt buckle. David has made buckles for decades, and they are still sold through a small group of leatherworkers in different parts of the country. This is the first regular buckle design contributed by Reed.