ONE COULD SAY that leather craft runs in Blane Bunbury’s family. His late father was a practitioner, his mother also took up the art and so too did his sister.
Before his family relocated to Barbados from Guyana in 1999 when he was about eight years old, the art form was all around him, yet he wanted no part of it.
“To be honest, I didn’t really like leather craft; I thought it was a whole lot of dust everywhere and looked like a bundle of confusion,” he admitted during an interview at his Ivy, St Michael home.
He tried his hand in many other areas just to avoid it. For example, when he graduated from St George Secondary School, he went into construction doing labour work. He endured that for roughly eight months before he threw in the towel.
He then moved on to work at a printing company as a finisher. After a few years there, then barely out of his 20s, the entrepreneurial bug bit Bunbury. He recounted that during his schooldays he had always desired to own his own business and around 2012 he felt it was time.
He felt it would be sensible to explore something familiar and in so doing, he established BOA Services (Built On Aesthetics). But again, staying clear of leather craft, he intended the business would focus on construction designs.
However, getting the business off the ground wasn’t as easy as he had envisaged.
Finally, he changed course when he determined his skill set in leather craft could no longer be avoided.
“Craft was something that I knew. However, I found that I had a challenge because people didn’t really take me seriously. At my age and having guys who had 30 years’ experience in the business, they probably didn’t think I was capable; that is the impression I was getting.”
Rather than create traditional leather products such as shoes and belts, the 26-yearold decided to go in a different direction.
He made such things as watch straps, wallets, tablet cases, passport cases and jewellery. He also did leather repairs along with some unusual products, including coins, pin and lipstick pouches, pencil covers, toothpick dispensers and napkin holders. “So basically, I had to prove my worth designing my own stuff rather than buying and selling, until people had no choice but to take me seriously,” he said.
Bunbury works with hides of sheep, buffaloes, cows, kids and goats, and also integrates a lot of different fibres like hemp. He also plans to work with rabbit, elephant and fish skins. He said he would also like to work with Barbados’ Black Belly Sheep hide but voiced disappointment that it was too expensive to source on the island.
Business for the youngster has been high and low. He said he believed so much that could be done with leather if people just explored the areas.
“I guess because they are afraid to step out of the comfort zone, that’s why it [business] has been here and there. I think people accept what I’m doing because it is different from your average leather craft person and I guess because I have a versatile way of approaching products.
“I am always improving, always trying to step up. So my biggest competition is myself. It may sound strange but I always try to compete with what I did a couple months ago. So I’m soon going to do upholstery for automotive and residential that is more 2017/2018 because it takes a lot more material and patience and time. I’ve tested with synthetic leather so far. There are a lot of different things that I will be going into. That is why when someone asks me what I do, I find it very difficult to answer. I do a lot of different things,” Bunbury said.
BOA is also making a name for itself in the sphere of craving, for his popular wood vine pencils, and pyrography – described as the art of decorating wood or leather by burning a design on the surface with a heated metallic point.
A lot of his work is sold at Barbadiana Discovered Treasures in Sky Mall and Blue Island Treasures at Pirate’s Cove, Bay Street. (SDB Media)
