The International Assembly of Leathercraftsmen, 1954–1970

The Assembly left no archive of its own in this collection. What survives is the Society's newsletter: a notice of the coming Assembly in the winter or spring issue, and a report of it in the summer issue after. This page is assembled from that run, and every claim below names the issue and page it comes from. Where two issues disagree, both are given. Every name on this page is given as the newsletter itself printed it.

A weekend in Buffalo, October 1954

“The First International Assembly of Leathercraftsman arose out of discussions held between Toronto and Rochester leathercraftsmen last spring,” the Autumn 1954 newsletter reported. “It was felt that leathercraftsmen from both Canada and the U.S.A. would derive much benefit from an opportunity to get together and discuss their favorite topic — leather.” The result was a Leathercraft Weekend at the Hotel Statler in Buffalo on 30 and 31 October 1954. More than 150 leathercrafters came, about thirty of them Canadians from London, Toronto, Welland “and other centers”. The guilds of Detroit, Buffalo and Rochester set up displays, alongside representative pieces from the C.S.C.L. and some Al Stohlman originals, and Saturday was given over to continuous demonstrations of carving, stitching, colouring, box-covering and purse framing. (Autumn 1954, page 3.)

• Founded out of talks between Toronto and Rochester leathercrafters in the spring of 1954
• First held at the Hotel Statler, Buffalo, 30–31 October 1954 — more than 150 attending
• Sixteen Assemblies in all; hosted in Canada in 1955, 1961, 1964, 1967, 1969 and 1970
• The Salon of Leathercraft, judged on art standards, began at the 4th Assembly at Rochester in 1957 on a C.S.C.L. proposal
• Annual except 1958; the last was Toronto, 1970, held with the Society’s 20th Annual Meeting

The decision that made it a series was taken at an organizational meeting on the Saturday afternoon: “it was decided that the Assembly should be an annual gathering under the guidance of an international committee”, and the next was set for Toronto in the spring of 1955, spring being thought “a better time than fall for such a gathering”. Cecil Roebuck of Toronto was appointed Chairman of that committee, with Bob Hartman of Detroit as Vice-Chairman, Mrs. Louise Smyth of Toronto as Secretary and Mrs. Nora Huyck of Toronto as Treasurer. On the Sunday morning Dr. Ralph Larmour showed his collection of leathercraft slides. (Autumn 1954, page 3.)

Toronto, May 1955 — “the most important event to date in C.S.C.L. history”

The Society announced the Second Assembly a full six months ahead, printing a tentative programme for the Tudor Room of the Royal York Hotel on 7 and 8 May 1955 and calling it “the most important event to date in C.S.C.L. history”. Its guests were to be the Detroit Leathercrafters, the Frontier LeatherArt Guild of Buffalo and the Eastern Leathercraft Guild of Rochester. The Society folded its own Annual Meeting into the weekend, and the year's Fellow and Associate awards were made there. (Winter 1955, pages 1–3 and 11.)

The report afterwards is the fullest account of any Assembly in the collection. “What had promised to be just another large meeting of leathercraftsmen turned out to be a two-day course of instruction in all phases of leathercraft.” Sessions ran an hour each and covered colouring, carving, name-plates, purse-framing, embossing, moccasins, moulded leather trays, high relief tooling, saddle stitching, tool making, braiding and lacing, silver engraving, box covering, portrait carving and glove making — “at times the demonstration tables were so crowded it was impossible to add any more spectators and the demonstrators disappeared from view.” (Summer 1955, page 9.)

The newsletter counted the room: 377 leathercrafters in attendance, of whom 132 were from the United States and 245 Canadian, and of those Canadians 144 were members of C.S.C.L. The banquet in the Crystal Ballroom on the Saturday evening drew 256 members and guests. Dr. Ralph Larmour, as President, welcomed them; the speaker was Thor Hansen on “Creative Imagination at Work”, who urged originality and “appropriateness of design for leather, emphasizing Canadian motifs” and suggested designs might be adapted from “the old Indian and Eskimo art work and from Canadian scenery, even city skylines and the grain elevators of the west”. A fashion show by the Michigan Leather Artisans followed, under Mrs. Liz Freriks, showing leather combined with aluminium in handbags, hats and jewellery. (Summer 1955, pages 9 and 10.)

Sunday morning opened with the Society's own Annual Business Meeting, reported elsewhere in the same issue, followed by a panel discussion answering questions put by members of the guilds present. The panel was Harry Kellett of Buffalo; Bob Dengler, Carol Ruflin and Jack Yarko of Rochester; Gordon Drummond of Detroit; and Robert Muma and Don MacKinnon of Toronto, with Fred Fischer of Buffalo as Moderator — cut short by the time limit before every question was answered. A talk on “Basic Design for Leather Carving”, with a Viewgraph demonstration on monograms, followed from Frank Radke and Larry DeRosia of Detroit. (Summer 1955, page 10.)

The Vice-Chairman appointed in 1954 is printed “Bob Hartman” in Autumn 1954 and “Bob Hartmann” in Summer 1955, where he is named Chairman of the Third Assembly. Both spellings are as the Society itself printed them, and this archive does not choose between them.

Detroit 1956, Rochester 1957, and the birth of the Salon

Before the Toronto weekend broke up, the participating guilds met and fixed the Third Assembly for 12 and 13 May 1956 at the Hotel Statler in Detroit, with Bob Hartmann as Chairman and Mrs. Liz Freriks as Vice-Chairman; the C.S.C.L. appointed its own local committee under Ray Potter, with Harold Frost as Vice-Chairman and Viola Harris as Secretary. (Summer 1955, page 10.) The Detroit Assembly is remembered in the newsletter chiefly through its demonstrations — the Frontier LeatherArt Guild carving forest scenes and pansy designs, braided handles shown by Hartmann, a bag of Mrs. Koegler's “carved only with the knife cuts to varying depths… one of the most original methods shown at the Assembly”. (Summer 1956, page 6.)

Detroit also decided the thing the Society had asked for. “The International Assembly, Detroit, 1956, decided to give special recognition to outstanding leatherwork by holding a Salon Exhibit at future Assemblies. For the 4th Assembly 7 of the participating guilds were permitted to enter 5 pieces each. The CSCL was permitted 15 pieces as a national group.” (Summer 1957, page 4.) The Society's own retrospective of 1975 puts the proposal at its door: “For the Fourth International Assembly of Leathercraftsmen held in Rochester, our Society had proposed the inauguration of a Salon of Leathercraft to be based on art standards”, judged by “a jury of Rochester arts and crafts authorities”. (Spring 1975, page 5.) The Salon ribbons the archive records begin in that year.

The 4th, at Rochester in 1957, was hosted by the Eastern Leathercraft Guild in a small hotel given over entirely to the weekend, “one of closeness and friendliness”, with the demonstration seating placed in tiers “so that everyone could have a good view of the demonstrator in comfort” and the Salon exhibits viewed on television at the Friday social. (Summer 1957, page 16.)

The year with no Assembly

“As most members know, it was the decision of the last International Assembly to hold meetings only every two years, with regional get-togethers of an informal nature in the year between.” (Winter 1957, page 2.) So 1958 has no Assembly, only a Regional Meeting at Prudhomme's, of which slides and 8 mm film were circulated afterwards among the guilds. (Autumn 1958, page 7.) The Society's 1975 history records the gap in a phrase — “with one exception this has continued as an annual event” (Spring 1975, page 5) — and that exception is this one. At Flint in 1959 the guilds reversed themselves: “It was decided to hold the Assembly annually again.” (Summer 1959, page 8.)

Flint 1959 and Buffalo 1960: the newsletter turns critic

From the Fifth Assembly the reports stop being announcements and start being criticism. Of Flint in May 1959: “the Salt Lake display stood out because it was the only one in which totally carved leather was featured. Other guilds have gone far towards the use of leather for leather's sake with little or no decoration. Looking back to the first Assembly, they seem to have come a long way in this direction, and CSCL now has much stiffer competition.” Two guilds showed eight bags of the same Frick design between them, and the reviewer thought “fewer of them would have had the same effect without the monotony”. (Summer 1959, page 6.) The registration list that year named craftspeople from Wisconsin, Colorado, Missouri, California and Illinois, and from Regina, Toronto, Hamilton, London, Petrolia, Barrie and Welland. (Summer 1959, page 8.)

Buffalo in May 1960 had “noticeably fewer articles on display… perhaps reflecting the drop in membership experienced by several guilds”. (Summer 1960, page 1.) It was also the most argumentative of the Assemblies: Paul Payne lectured on “Aesthetics and Leathercraft”, dividing art into “the idea, technical skills, achievement of the object, criticism” (Summer 1960, page 2); the after-dinner talk, “Design and the Craftsman”, was given by Victor Papenek (Summer 1960, page 3); and the Autumn issue gave its whole front page to the jury's remarks, by D. Kenneth Winebrenner, on the difficulty of judging another person's work at all. (Autumn 1960, page 1.)

The Summer 1960 newsletter spells the after-dinner speaker’s name “Papenek”. The archive holds no other mention of him and does not identify him further.

Vineland 1961: antique leather under lock and key

The Seventh was the Society's own, at Prudhomme's Motor Hotel, Vineland, on 6 and 7 May 1961. The notice sold it as a family weekend — registration $1.50 a person, banquet $4 a plate, and “swimming (indoor pool, bring your suit), 5 and 10 pin bowling, golf, tennis and horseback riding”. Its distinctive feature was “a unique display of antique leather articles, which will be insured and placed in locked show cases at Prudhommes so they will be well protected from theft and handling”, loaned by C.S.C.L. members and by the Jordan Historical Museum of the Twenty. (Winter 1960, page 5; Spring 1961, page 6.) The report judged it “encouraging in its exhibition of finer leathercraftsmanship, its display of greater originality and the wide variety of” work shown. (Spring 1961, page 4.)

Detroit, Rochester, Toronto: 1962 to 1964

The Eighth convened at the Hotel Wolverine in Detroit on 4–6 May 1962 “under the capable chairmanship of Paul Payne” (Winter 1961, page 4); the Ninth at the Manger Hotel, Rochester, 3–5 May 1963 (Winter 1962, page 7). At the Rochester Advisory Board meeting Mrs. Jean Newton, a past President of the Society, was elected General Chairman of the next (Summer 1963, page 2), and the Tenth was held at the Park Plaza Hotel, Toronto, on 1–3 May 1964. Its hosts advertised a novelty: “you can take home with you an almost finished article as a lasting memento of the Tenth International Assembly.” (Winter 1963, pages 1–2.) The Society's incoming President, Viola Harris, made the Assembly the theme of her first message: “Let us all work very hard toward an excellent show at the 10th International Assembly.” (Spring 1963, page 1.)

The Tenth also recruited: four members of a group that had attended the Society's 1964 Annual Meeting went on to the Assembly in Toronto that May, and “these four in turn spread such enthusiasm that it was decided to apply for Branch affiliation” — the origin of the Belleville Branch. (Spring 1965, page 3.)

Flint 1965 to Niagara Falls 1968

The Eleventh returned to Flint, 7–9 May 1965, at the Pick-Durant Hotel, and was reported for the newsletter by Jack Layton of Belleville: “Each person registering was presented with a unique grab bag.” (Summer 1965, page 1.) The Twelfth went to the Hotel Statler-Hilton in Buffalo on 29 and 30 April and 1 May 1966, hosted by the Frontier Leather Art Guild, registration still $1.50 (Summer 1965, page 3); the Thirteenth to the Park Plaza in Toronto in May 1967 (Autumn 1967, page 4); the Fourteenth to the Parkway Inn, Niagara Falls, New York, on 3–5 May 1968, with the Michigan Leather Artisans, the Frontier Leather Art Guild and the Eastern Leathercraft Guild jointly hosting. Registration convener Julia Tuttle counted 106 members registered — a figure worth setting beside the 377 of Toronto in 1955. (Summer 1968, page 6.)

London 1969

The Fifteenth met at the Hotel London in London, Ontario, on 2–4 May 1969. The Saturday programme is the fullest list of teaching the Assembly ever printed in this collection: tool sharpening with Walter Mickey, flower making with Jessie Strain, leather covered bottles with May Corbett, corners and turned edges with Fred Brown, soft leather belts with Jean Newton, maple leaves with Nan Astley, wallet interiors with Clara Cavanagh, glove making with Sylvia Gerster, sandals with Huldy Gutekunst, decorating with gold with Clarence Redman, moccasins with Gladys Riddell, and millboard box construction with Frank Torry. At lunch the party toured London and saw “Leather Today” at the art museum. The cartoonist Merle Tingley spoke at the dinner in the Crystal Ball Room, and Mrs. Irva Ford, the Society's President, welcomed the members. (Summer 1969, page 3.)

Toronto 1970: the last one

“The year 1970 marks a milepost in the history of the Canadian Society for Creative Leathercraft. For the first time in twenty years the Annual Meeting of the Society has been held in conjunction with the International Assembly of Leathercraftsmen.” The Toronto Branch hosted the Sixteenth at the Park Plaza under Dorothy Muma as chairman. The judges chose 34 articles out of 197 on display for the Craftsman Awards, and nine Salon ribbons were awarded on the Saturday morning. Miss Viola Harris was made an honorary Fellow; the Weston Trophy went to the Toronto Branch on 85.3 per cent. (Spring 1970, page 3.)

There was no seventeenth. The Society's 1975 retrospective states the ending in one sentence: “In 1970 the 20th Annual meeting of C.S.C.L., combined with the 16th International Assembly of Leathercraftsmen, was held. This was the final meeting of the International Assembly of Leathercraftsmen, as there was no invitation forthcoming from the U.S.A.” (Spring 1975, page 8.)

The sixteen Assemblies

Three dates in the table are given differently by different issues. The Sixteenth is headed “April 3 - 5, 1970” on p. 3 of Spring 1970, while p. 4 of the same issue dates the Advisory Board’s Friday-evening meeting of that weekend 24 April 1970 and Autumn 1969, p. 10 announces “April 24, 25, 26”; the table gives the month, which all three agree on. The Seventh is announced for 6 and 7 May 1961 in Winter 1960 and reported as “held May 5, 7th this year” in Spring 1961, where the line is broken by an address set into the column. The Fifth is dated 2 and 3 May 1959 by its own report. The 1992 Hamilton Branch history places that branch’s first Assembly “On May 4th and 5th 1956… in Rochester, N.Y.”, which agrees with no contemporary issue — 1956 was Detroit and Rochester was 1957 — and is recorded here as the retrospective’s own error, left as that 1992 history printed it.

Written for this archive from the Society’s newsletters, 1954–1975. The pages quoted are linked from the newsletter archive.