AWL THE RAGE Former fisherman’s handmade leather goods take off with a blessing from Martha

It’s quite a leap from offshore fisherman to quality boot maker and leather crafter, but Robin Lawlor has made it seamlessly.

Lawlor, founder of Travellers Leather in Belfast, has made quite a name for himself in the decade since he stopped tending nets and learned how to work leather. His handmade leather designs have attracted the fancy of connoisseurs of fine goods and his shop on Main Street is starting to attract the business he hoped for when he first opened his doors four years ago.

“I’m doing real well,” Lawlor said. “These are handmade products so I’m kind of limited by how much I can do. I can only put out so much in a week, so that’s my limit. But we’ve had a lot of interest and people are starting to find out about what we have.”

One of those who got wind of Travellers Leather was lifestyle maven Martha Stewart. Stewart came across some of Lawlor’s molded leather handbags and immediately arranged for him to be on her syndicated television show, “Martha Stewart Living.”

A film crew spent 10 hours in the shop this summer filming Lawlor while he made one of his signature creations, a leather fireplace bucket. The shop offers an eclectic mix of leather products in a setting highlighted by old sewing machines and piles of uncut leather. Stewart’s crew may have “tore the place upside down,” but the television exposure was more than worth it.

The five-minute “Martha Stewart Living” segment was broadcast on Nov. 14 and Lawlor immediately was inundated with orders and requests for information.

“I got hundreds of calls; it kind of saved me from a slow summer,” he said. “A lot of orders, a lot of calls for catalogs.”

Lawlor dabbled in leather working in the 1960s but his interests turned to boat building when he moved to Maine in the early 1970s. He worked building boats “up and down the coast” until he got hooked on fishing. He lived on the isolated islands of Matinicus and Criehaven (he and his girlfriend were the only people who remained on the island over the winter). He took a turn fishing for lobster and also went to sea on draggers hunting groundfish.

“Whatever boat you can get on, whatever they are going after. That’s the life of a fisherman,” he said.

By 1990 Lawlor was “kind of worn out” from the physical grind of fishing and decided to return to working with leather. As he puts it, “I bought an old sewing machine and pallet of hides and just started in.”

Lawlor had noted that many leather craftsmen use cardboard liners when fashioning handmade leather bags, but he decided there had to be a better way.

Turning to the woodworking experience he picked up while building boats, Lawlor decided to create molded products. He made the molds from wood and went about the task of stretching the leather across the molds to shape his designs. It was trial and error at first, but once he got it down he knew he had crafted a quality product.

All of Lawlor’s bags are made from single pieces of premium saddle leather. It wasn’t long before he had designed a full line of handbags and carrying cases, leather luggage and totes. He began bringing his goods to gift shows in New York and they caught the eye of some of the country’s major retailers.

Lawlor said all of them wanted his products, but in large amounts. He said crafting handmade goods is time-consuming and that he needs to train and hire assistants to fill the orders.

“The problem is, I can’t do volume,” he said. “It’s kind of too bad because Maine is still the number one state for hooking up manufacturers with skilled people who can do leather work. There’s a market out there but there’s this swamp between me and volume production. Right now I just can’t get there from here.”

Along with crafting molded clutch bags, purses, shoulder bags, totes and other items, Lawlor also is a skilled custom shoe and boot maker. Lawlor said he learned the craft by apprenticing with boot makers across the country. He learned to make a variety of styles and the disappearing art of custom-designing and crafting footwear.

“I paid to learn and it took me years. A person told me it was going to take me six years when I started out to learn boot making, but I was lucky and learned in four. I had to go out West, and worked pretty hard to get the right training,” he recalled. “Once you learn, you’ve learned what is needed to work leather. Anyone who can make a pair of boots pretty much has a range of skills necessary to all kinds of work.”

Lawlor says each boot requires the taking of measurements and the shaping of a mold in the contour of the customer’s foot. Once the measurements are taken, the rest of the work can be done by long distance. A sample shoe or boot, called a “fit-pair,” is made first and sent off to the buyer to ensure they are sized properly. Then the final shoe or boot is made. The work is detailed and time-consuming, but the end result is a boot that will last a lifetime. It takes about 80 hours to make a quality pair of boots.

“I was a little unsure if I could get enough orders for boots and shoes, but the orders are there,” he said. “I can get behind a year, easy at times, especially for footwear, but people understand that.”

Lawlor’s most popular boot style is a cross between Western cowboy boots and an engineer boot. The design “kind of took off with people in the East” and are identified by their inlaid five-pointed star on the rear of the shaft. A custom pair of boots runs around $1,800 and that the price doesn’t seem to matter to most customers.

“Some people don’t even ask how much they’re going to be; they just sit down to be measured,” he said.

Lawlor will continue to attend the New York trade shows and is also planning to take in a few shows that cater to the horse set. He said horse owners need quality leather products because of the wear and tear. He said a fine set of custom leather saddlebags will last for decades.

“Once you have something custom-made, you get spoiled,” he said. “It’s hard getting anything that fits these days that is factory-made.”

Travellers Leather can be reached at 338-9783, P.O. Box 572, Belfast, ME. 04915 and via email at tleather@acadia.net. Visit the shop’s Web site at www.travellersleather.com.