Gilmore McLean

In 2014, I started working at Hide & Sole, a small Mom & Pop shoe and leather supply store in downtown Missoula, MT. I was fascinated with the leather. As something commonplace in our homes and our lives, there was so much I didn’t know about it. I started reading every book that we had at the shoe store, absolutely captivated. Formerly a futon maker, and always an amateur sewist, I had a pretty good idea about how to put leather together and started buying more and more pieces to experiment with. I then redirected my creative side for a couple of years while I got my master’s in environmental philosophy, staying at the shoe store and also learning how to repair Birkenstocks (futon maker? Environmental philosophy? Birkenstocks? This all makes sense if you’re familiar with Missoula).

It all changed in 2018. Recovering from grad school I discovered a newfound manual competency. I was enthusiastic about putting things together (which can probably be attributed to sitting in a classroom for 2 years feeling like the world was falling apart). I was approached by a customer and old school leatherworker named Earl Corneil. He invited me to learn carving and tooling. I got the impression he had extended this offer to many people and not had too many take him up on it (this is affirmed by my constant offers to teach tooling, which often go unanswered). I called his bluff and he taught me the basics of tooling, and the rest is history. Ever since I’ve been struck by the desire to learn everything I can about everything even just tangentially related to leatherwork, be it geometry, chemistry, history, and beyond.

Now, having relocated to Butte, MT, I live with my partner and more cats than I’d like to mention, and find myself in the convenient position of being able to focus exclusively on my business, growing vegetables, and renovating our hovel.

Check out Gilmore's work HERE