The London Branch, 1950–1989

No London member wrote a history of the branch, and none was written for it afterwards. This page is assembled from the run of newsletters — the Guild's own report of its founding, printed in the summer of 1952; the affiliation notice of 1955; the Weston Trophy award of 1957 and the review of the pieces that won it; a branch census of 1959 that prints the officers with their addresses; and the Editor's single regretful line of Winter 1989. Every claim names the issue and page it comes from. The personal addresses below are published from newsletters of the 1950s, as the archive's rule allows for material earlier than 2010.

Dorinda Street, summer 1950

The branch is older than the idea of branches. In the summer of 1950 — the same year the Society was founded, and within weeks of it — thirteen people at 475 Dorinda Street in London took a fourteen-week course in leather carving in ten days, taught by Jack McDougall of Toronto. The Guild's own report, printed two years later, opens on the noise: “For two weeks there was a scene of continuous activity and a sound of heavy tapping could be heard through it all.”

• Founded in the summer of 1950 as the Leather Carvers' Guild of London — before the Society itself had branches
• First President, Margaret Jennings; first Secretary, Helen M. Wheaton
• Affiliated to the Society in 1955; won the first Weston Trophy ever awarded, in 1957
• Wound up before Winter 1989; its members stayed on as Members-at-Large
• An unofficial successor, the London Leather Guild, has met informally since soon after 2010, named in the Society’s newsletter from 2012

“In the final evening of their classes, students organized themselves as the ‘Leather Carvers' Guild of London’ with Margaret Jennings as President, Helen Wheaton, Secretary, Edythe Stewart, Treasurer and Arthur Burgess, Manager of Supplies. Jack McDougall and Margaret McDougall were elected Honorary President and Honorary Vice-President. At the next annual meeting Clair Mitchener was made Vice-President.” By the summer of 1952 the membership had doubled. (Summer 1952 p3.)

The names in this section are given as the page prints them.

The Guild ran itself formally from the start. It drew up a constitution and by-laws, met on the fourth Monday of the month, and admitted nobody without an examination: “Those seeking membership must try a working examination — set, supervised and judged by a Board of Examiners.” After passing it a member paid two dollars to join and twenty-five cents a month, or two dollars a year in advance. Helen Wheaton chaired the Examining Committee. (Summer 1952 p3; Spring 1973 p6.)

A teaching guild

What London did with itself, more than anything else, was teach. Its members taught the leathercraft classes in the London night schools — Beal Technical, Princess Elizabeth, Arva Collegiate and the YM and YWCA — and the leather carving groups at the Beck Memorial Sanitorium; as a group they ran the carving classes at the “Y” Craft Shop, “with practically every member teaching under the direction of the President.” They showed and demonstrated at the Western Fair, at the “Y” Hobby Fair, and at church fairs in London and St. Thomas. (Summer 1952 p3.)

In February 1952 the Guild sponsored the Society's Travelling Exhibition for four days in the art gallery of the London Public Library, with demonstrations every evening. Margaret Jennings, writing to the Society as the host group's President, said what it had done for the city: “Everybody is amazed at the range of articles shown. Many are interested in the creative phase of Canadian leathercraft. The display will certainly give leathercraft a tremendous boost in this city and surrounding area.” When the Exhibition was rebuilt in 1954, the London Leather Carvers' Guild supplied its wallet-interiors section. (March 1952 p8; Spring 1954 p7.)

It also wanted a room of its own. The Guild's 1952 report ends on the ambition to “have its own workshop where members and other leathercrafters may come to work in companionship, to procure materials and instruction.” Nothing in the later newsletters says whether it ever got one. (Summer 1952 p4.)

Affiliation, 1955

London joined the Society as a body five years after it had formed. At the Annual Meeting held with the Second International Assembly in 1955, “an application from the London Leathercraft Guild to become an affiliated group of the C.S.C.L. was approved and we heartily welcome this group into affiliation with the Society.” The newsletters call it the Leather Carvers' Guild of London, the London Leathercraft Guild, the London Leathercrafters and the London Branch, in that rough order, over about fifteen years. (Summer 1955 p9.)

By the following summer it was reporting like a branch: a good proportion of its members had contributed to the Society's autumn sale, it had run a booth at the Western Fair Sportsmen's Show, and it was supplying judges to local fair boards. (Summer 1956 p5.)

The first Weston Trophy, 1957

The Weston Trophy is the Society's competition between branches, judged on the group display each one submits at the Annual Meeting. The first was awarded in April 1957, and London won it. The Board of Selection found the decision hard: “The competition between Hamilton and London was very keen, and it was indeed most difficult to decide between them… The general feeling about the two major displays was that Hamilton was ‘as an adventurer, stepping out into new fields’, and that London perhaps showed a little more mature finished work.” Tillsonburg, then very new and very small, put in a third display the judges called creditable. (Spring 1957 pp4–5.) (See the Weston Trophy roll.)

The trophy itself was not finished in time, so the President of the London Branch was handed a certificate standing in for it, presented by Edith Roscoe; London received its small shield a year later, and Toronto — the 1958 winner — agreed that London should hold the large shield for part of the coming year. (Spring 1957 p4; Spring 1958 p9.)

The trophy's origin is often told as though the Weston branch and the London branch were the same thing. They were not. Edith Roscoe was a charter member of the Society and the first president of the Weston Leathercraft Guild — “the first leather craft guild in Canada under the Canadian Handicrafts Guild” — and it was the Weston Guild that disbanded: “When this branch disbanded, the money in the treasury was used by C.S.C.L. Executive Council to establish a trophy for group displays by competing branches.” Roscoe presented the trophy her own guild had paid for to a different branch. (Spring 1970 p7; Spring 1957 p4.)

It was London's only win in thirty-three years of the competition — the roll of winners transcribed from the trophy shield in 1989 gives “London Branch – 1 time – 1957” — but the branch went on entering. The judges' notes on its 1970 display, printed over two pages, are among the fullest criticism the newsletter ever gave any branch's work. (Winter 1989 p10; Spring 1970 pp12–13.)

London also put a question to the Society that changed how branches worked. At the 1958 Annual Meeting, “at the request of the London Branch… the Executive Council later appointed a sub-committee to investigate the possibilities of compiling a directory listing persons who would be willing to demonstrate or speak at Branch meetings.” (Spring 1958 p4.)

The branch in 1959

The Winter 1959 newsletter printed a census of all the branches with their officers and their meeting places. London's were: President, Mrs. D. V. (Joan) Carroll, 185 Gammage St.; Vice-President, Mrs. F. P. (Marion) Kehoe, 1244 Hillcrest; Secretary, Mrs. H. (Eleanor) Pearson, 1825 Dundas St.; Treasurer, Miss Hilda Vaile, 48 Forbes Street. “Meetings are held the first Friday of each month at the home of Mrs. Harold Wheaton, 100 Grand Avenue, London, Ont.” — that is, at Helen Wheaton's house. (Winter 1959 p7.) A separate report of branch meetings in the Fall 1959 newsletter names Mrs. D. V. Carroll again as London's President, alongside the presidents of Hamilton and Toronto. (Autumn 1959 p10.)

The years between that census and 1969 can be filled in from the Society's own executive rosters. Jean Muxlow was London's Branch Chairman in 1962; Marion Kehoe — the 1959 Vice-President above — became President herself by 1965, the year she also demonstrated at the 11th International Assembly in Flint, Michigan, and went on to a long run on the Society's own Executive Council through the 1970s. Ivy Rath was Vice-President and Marjorie Switzer Secretary in the 1967–68 term. (Spring 1962, page 12; Summer 1965, pages 2–3 and 7; 1967-spring no. 3, page 12.)

Ten years later the branch's officers for 1969–70 were Charles W. Fuller, President; Sylvia Gerster, Vice-President; Helen M. Wheaton, Secretary; and Margaret Fader, Treasurer. Fader died on 18 May 1974 and is in the Society's In Memoriam record. Fuller was still President the following year: the Society's own executive roster for 1970–71 names him again. (Spring 1969 p9; Spring 1970 p6.)

Ilene Lawrence succeeded Fuller as President by 1972, and held the office again in 1973. (Summer 1972, page 9; Summer 1973, page 12.)

The Western Fair

The Western Fair at London was the branch's own show, and for years a London member ran the department that judged it: Helen M. Wheaton signs the reports as Supervisor of the Handcraft Department, later the Home Arts Department, of the Western Fair Association. The Society printed her prize lists in the spring newsletters, so London's makers appear in the archive's award records more thickly than any other branch's. She used the space to recruit: “We always look for and hope there will be a greater number of articles in the competition each year. So hone up your knife along with your interest and we'll keep our hopes alive for another year.” (Spring 1964 p8; Winter 1971 p5.)

What London sent outward

Two things the branch did are larger than the branch. The first is Woodstock. Beula Reynolds “has been doing leatherwork since 1952 when she joined the Woodstock members who drove to London Branch for 25 years before forming the Woodstock Branch” in 1968; Carol McLean, who started in night school in 1964, “was one of the Woodstock group that joined London Branch.” Reynolds went on to become President of the Society, 1978–80; McLean's own Who's Who profile names Publicity Chairman, Recording Secretary and the Exhibition Committee among her Council service, and she served as Archivist for most of the 1980s — not the Presidency, which her profile does not claim. The Woodstock branch is, in effect, London's. (Summer 1978 p1; Spring 1983 p6.)

The second is Helen Wheaton herself — charter member of the Guild in 1950 and its first Secretary, Associate of the Society in 1954, holder of Teaching Certificate “A” in 1957, Fellow in 1965, and President of the Society from 1972. Her Who's Who profile of Spring 1973 is the fullest account of a London member the archive holds. Sylvia Gerster's is the other name that travels: in 1963 she worked the leather for furniture the London artist Phillip Aziz designed for the west chapel of Timothy Eaton Memorial Church in Toronto, cowhide of 8–9 oz. in the chairs and 4–5 oz. in the footstools. (Spring 1973 p6; Winter 1963 p6.)

In 1969 the Society brought its Fifteenth International Assembly to London. Registration opened on the Friday evening in the lobby of the Hotel London; the Saturday lunch hour was given to a tour of the city, including the art museum's exhibition “Leather Today”; the cartoonist Merle Tingley spoke at the dinner in the Crystal Ball Room, introduced by Charles Fuller as London's President. Sylvia Gerster ran the glove-making workshop. (Summer 1969 p3.)

Twenty years, and then the end

“London guild has just celebrated its 20th anniversary. The London members observed the occasion with a picnic. All former members were invited; six past presidents and six charter members were among the 38 attending. They had a cake with very appropriate decorations.” That is the Autumn 1970 newsletter, and it is the last time the branch is described at any length. (Autumn 1970 p11.)

The end is one sentence, in the Editor's report of Winter 1989: “It is with regret that the Barrie and London Branches are no longer in existence but we are glad to note that their members stayed on as Members-At-Large.” No newsletter records a final meeting or a date. The branch that had formed before the Society had branches, and won the first trophy the Society ever gave, left without a notice. (Winter 1989 p10.)

After 1989: an unofficial guild, without a branch

The Society’s own branch was gone, but leathercrafting in London was not. After the Woodstock Branch — itself founded by London members — closed in 2010, Dorothy and David McPherson began opening their home to informal, once-a-year meetings of London-area leathercrafters; the group took to calling itself the London Leather Guild, with no membership fee and no executive. The Society’s newsletter first names it in the summer of 2012, and profiled McPherson and the group at length in 2016: members continuing to exhibit, compete and demonstrate at local events such as the Thorndale Fall Fair and the Western Fair, and attending the Society’s own Annual as Members-at-Large. It is not a branch of the Society and has never asked to be one — but it is the nearest thing London has had to one since 1989. (Summer 2012, Summer 2016.)

Assembled from March 1952 p8, Summer 1952 pp3–4 (the Guild's own report of its founding), Spring 1954 p7, Autumn 1954 p5, Summer 1955 p9, Summer 1956 p5, Spring 1957 pp4–5, Spring 1958 pp4 and 9, Winter 1959 p7, Autumn 1959 p10, Spring 1962 p12, Summer 1965 pp2–3 and 7, Spring 1967 (no. 3) p12, Summer 1972 p9, Summer 1973 p12, Winter 1963 p6, Spring 1964 p8, Spring 1966 p7, Spring 1969 p9, Summer 1969 p3, Spring 1970 pp6, 7 and 12–13, Autumn 1970 p11, Winter 1971 p5, Spring 1973 p6, Summer 1978 p1, Spring 1983 p6 and Winter 1989 p10.