Jewelry Artist Podcast: Theatrical Flair with Sarah Cathcart

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Leather artist and occasional jewelry maker Sarah Cathcart studied costume design and today focuses on making elaborate masks.

ABOVE: Sarah Cathcart’s leather and malachite cuff project will appear in “Skin in the Game” in the upcoming Lapidary Journal Jewelry Artist January/February 2021. ALL PHOTOS COURTESY SARAH CATHCART

Listen to Sarah Cathcart on the Jewelry Artist Podcast

Get to know this talented artist with an aesthetic that spans the ages in her conversation on Jewelry Artist Podcast with host Kate Hacker, below. Read on to learn about some of the roots of hand painting leather and Sarah Cathcart’s own leather working tips.

Hand Tooled Leather Paintings

In “Today’s Illuminati” (Lapidary Journal Jewelry Artist January/February 2021) feature writer Terri Haag will profile three artists whose medium is essentially light. One of them is Sarah Cathcart, who showed the writer some of her work at the 2020 Tucson gem, mineral, fossil, bead, jewelry, and equipment shows. “The images she produced were of magnificently hand-tooled leather paintings of elaborate Celtic knots interspersed with dinosaurs, flow­ers, swirls, and tooled background designs, all hand-painted in brilliant colors highlighted with gold or silver or both,” Haag introduces Cathcart.

“These pieces would have made the monks who created the Book of Kells deliriously happy. That 8th century work is the best known and a consummate example of medieval illuminated manuscripts. Because of its extraordinary illustra­tions produced at such mindbog­gling expense, it is thought to have been about the art rather than the text. In a time when virtually no one could read, it probably served to awe and inspire rather than inform.

“Once the vellum (thin scraped animal skin) was prepared, scriptores wrote out the text. These writers left room at the top and sides of the pages for the illuminatores (artists) to decorate the page. The illuminators first rubbed the page of text with a piece of mica or clay and/or a mixture of ox-bile and egg white. Then, using a squirrel-hair brush, they added huge swirling capital letters and paintings of religious figures as well as everyday life and the occasional salacious scene.”

Leatherworking Tips from Sarah Cathcart

Hand tooling and painting leather today is still a labor-intensive process. Here are some tips and insights Sarah offers in her cuff project about both.

You need to buy vegetable tanned leather, a process all leather goes through before being treated further for making into belts, shoes, purses, etc. This is the only leather that really allows for tooling with strong impressions that last. Cattle is the standard.

Sometimes you can buy it in individual sheets, but this is usually the more expensive route. Leather is more commonly sold in sides or larger cuts like shoulders, bends (the back and side), belly, etc., and is usually sold by the square foot. A single shoulder can be as small as five square feet but easily nine feet as well.

Leather has two sides. The skin or top side that doesn’t look that dissimilar in texture from your own skin is the epidermis. The flesh side or the back of the leather has the spongy texture that composes the thicker layers of the dermis.

Cowhide is rather thick, so the leather has been scraped of fat and skived/shaved down to a more consistent thickness. It’s a natural material and you may encounter marks like scrapes, bug bites, and sometimes brands. Try to find a piece that is as clean of blemishes on the skin side.

Two Things You Must Always Do

Always save your scraps. You may want them for practice of your pressure, angle, and curves when using a swivel knife. Scraps are also great to play with, for practice of tool techniques, and to play with leather dye before committing to the final plan.

Always keep your blade perpendicular to the surface of the leather when using a swivel knife. If you rest your hand like you were drawing with a pencil you will get an undercut, and your tooling will not look as good.

Mold and Paint

Veg tan leather has a memory. This is what allows us to wet mold it, as for a bracelet, and to emboss/tool it. It’s also why this isn’t the most forgiving medium. If you make a cut, there’s no going back. If you drip dye on it, you’ll have to roll with it and tweak your design.

Water-based leather dye behaves very similarly to watercolor paint, although the leather will look much darker when it’s wet. To get a more accurate idea of the color you’ll get, let dry between coats. Start with watered down color and build up to your desired color. Be careful with your dye — once it’s on the leather it does not come up. It’s wise to keep a paper towel or scrap bit of leather to practice on first, and to remove excess dye.

Merle White is Editor-in-Chief of Lapidary Journal Jewelry Artist.

Learn to Make Jewelry with Leather

Jewelry artist Melissa Cable also works with leather. Learn the basics of leather jewelry making with her as you watch and listen to her in the studio.

Melissa provides further inspiration and instruction in making intermediate leather jewelry when you’re ready to go beyond the basics.