Ann became quite an accomplished leatherworker herself, having her work featured in a number of publications. Al specialized in custom-made leather work and inking illustrations for the instruction books while Ann typed all of the instructions. The Stohlmans moved to Cache Creek, British Colombia in 1969, where they spent the next 29 years creating the bulk of their life’s work. Stohlman met Ann McDonald at a leatherworking demonstration he was performing and the two went on to marry in 1963. There, he became a freelance artist and produced a number of patterns, tools, projects, and instruction books for Tandy Leather Company.
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One page led to another and he then moved to Los Angeles to work full time for Craftool, producing books such as “How to Carve Leather” and “Figure Carving” and developed many of the figure carving tools still carried in the Craftool line.Īfter two years in Los Angeles, Stohlman moved to the hills of Hemet for some peace and quiet. Lauterbach imparted his 40 years of leather working experience to Stohlman over the 5 year apprenticeship, advancing him from merely carving leather to building leather projects from the ground up.Īfter several years in the shop, Stohlman was offered the privilege of carving a Doodle Page for Dick McCahen, owner of the Craftool Co. While buying leather one day at Schaff’s Leather Company, he met Guy Lauterbach, who took him in as his apprentice in 1947.
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Stohlman’s free nights were spent in the bunkhouse working on leather. Stohlman went on to take a job as a barn boss at a dude ranch in the San Bernardino Mountains. People liked the picture work that was featured on the saddles and, before long, he had quite a bit of business going. When down at the auction yards trading horses, he would bid on plain saddles, tool them, and sell them the next week to the highest bidder, affording him enough money for another used saddle and a modest living for a few weeks. “If nothing else, it does develop your ingenuity.” “Doing things the hard way is not always the best, but it gives you a certain amount of experience and knowledge that would be very difficult to learn otherwise,” Stohlman once said. He began making own tools to fit his needs and progressed rapidly.
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Returning home from the war 4 years later, housing was difficult to find, so Stohlman lived in a little shack and traded horses in Laguna Canyon.Īfter viewing a poorly executed reproduction of a bucking horse on a saddle, Stohlman thought saddle art should be held to a higher standard if he could do it on paper, why not leather? He began to study other saddles very closely and developed his own techniques and procedures through trial and error, occasionally picking up tips from a local saddle shop. While in Milne Bay, New Guinea, Stohlman had his first encounter with leatherwork when he saw natives creating decorative designs in leather.
He was an excellent shot with a rifle, firing Expert with the M-1 in the army. In 1941, Stohlman was called to serve in the Army’s 46th Engineer Regiment. During this time, he learned a lot about horses and cowboys that became invaluable to his work, both as an artist and saddle-maker.
Growing up in the Santa Ana Canyon, he would trail along on his horse after the cowboys from Bixby Ranch as they drove cattle down the dry Santa Ana River bed to the railroad pens in Olive, CA. He and his wife Ann produced 100’s of magazine articles, Doodle Pages and other valuable tools still used in the leathercraft industry.Īs a young boy, drawing came naturally to Stohlman and he aspired to become an illustrator for western stories. Al Stohlman (1919-1998) was a pioneer in leathercraft and continues to influence hundreds of thousands of leathercrafters worldwide.
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