Hunger for Handmade

We're thinking about another trip next year, Paris again, because we love it, and Amsterdam (sort of again) because that one day on the way home last time wasn't nearly enough. This time the sightseeing will be more lesurely, with more time spent roaming and shopping.

I've been looking around online for a while now, and ran across Matieres a Reflexion. Leather bags, handmade from carefully selected vintage jackets, retaining the vintage details. Each is produced and numbered right there in the studio/shop. The bag pictured is from the Army line, made from old French Army jackets.

In Amsterdam the sightseeing will no doubt be more intensive, but we'll still make time to simply get a feel for the city. The shopping must-do is Denham the Jeanmaker. The website is beautiful, but a bit cumbersome to navigate. Still, I've read about Jason Denham from a number of sources, (his blog is interesting if you like clothing from a historical standpoint, I'd kill to see the Denham Garment Library) and I'm dying to see the clothes, which he describes this way:

"Our customer is not going to settle for less than jaw dropping, mouth watering, gotta have pieces. The only way we know how to make them is to create our own unique balance of deep authenticity, inventive contemporary detailing, and a distinctly modern attitude."

As much time as I spend painting you'd think I'd work the creative urge right out, but I've found myself wanting to make things lately. Not big things or furniture, but things I can hold in my hands. And a side effect of that desire seems to be a search for things not mass-produced.