Sharon Raymond 
Leather objects catch my eye, but none more so that a handbag I saw on the arm of a woman who entered my tent at a craft fair – I had no camera so didn’t record it, but I can still visualize it. Large bag, all seams hand-stitched and couched, meaning that a thin strip of colorful leather was caught under the stitches. There were large red and ochre glass trade beads seemingly epoxied to the ends of various straps, and an adorable little man on a bicycle embroidered front and center in primitive stitching. Now I know these are all features of a Henry Cuir handbag!
I have couched a lot of seams since seeing this bag, and embroidered little creatures on many shoes..no epoxied beads yet… but this process reminds me of the value of utilizing ideas from one object to another, particularly when they are using the same medium.
If you’d like to peruse the world of Henry Cuir handbags, and maybe glean some ideas for your own leatherwork, I recommend you look at used ones on ebay.com. – not to mention buy one some day! Although you’re probably like me and think, “I can make that bag myself” yet never get around to it – and when I think some more about it, I realize I don’t even need a bag!
I love to look at other articles made of leather for shoemaking inspiration, and one source that I keep going back to are Henry Cuir/Henry Beguelin (there was some sort of split into two companies) handbags. I go on ebay.com to see a serendipitous assortment of their products. But by all means, check out each of their website also. Funny, I love their bags so much, but not their shoes – I don’t understand why they don’t take the same aesthetic used in their bags and carry it over into their footwear.
And, each offers an example of the value of having a little unique feature that identifies your product. They stitch simple little characters somewhere on each “authentic” bag,
I have written elsewhere of the customer with gold-plated toenails who entered my craft fair booth; she had the most fascinating handbag I had seen..all the seams were stitched by hand, with a strip of leather “couched” under the stitches.
Here is an example of a couching stitch that I used at the heel of a children’s shoe, after seeing it on her “Henry” bag.
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There were wonderful trade beads epoxied, I guess, to the ends of the couching strips. Here’s a bag that has the most similarities to the one I actually saw:
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