He spent eight years in the Air Force building airplanes from sheet metal.  In his spare time overseas, he doodled and became a computer nerd.  In more recent years, he gave his garage over to woodworking and screen printing.  There is, however, one creative endeavor Rory White has intentionally avoided his whole life: leathercraft.

“It was something that I always knew would be a rabbit hole that I would fall far down into.  I was very careful not to dabble in it for many, many years, because I tend to get very tunnel-visioned when I’m engaged in something.  Everything else washes away,” White says, sitting inside his basement in Wellman.

He’s surrounded by his workbench and tools, rolls of tanned leather, and shelves of finished leather goods. 

He’s obviously fallen into the rabbit hole.

The condition White describes – one in which he is completely absorbed in his work, so much so that he loses sense of all else – psychologists call the “flow state.”  It’s an optimal, positive experience that artists often enjoy, and many others seek. 

By embracing it, a world full of creative possibility opened to him. 

“I think it was, ironically, just before COVID hit,” he says of his first dabble in leatherwork.  His Dad and uncles are all knife collectors, but their sheaths were always substandard, so White bought a cheap box of leather scraps on Amazon and attempted to make his own. 

The virus shut the world down, but for White, experimenting with leather scraps in his garage, “It was like the gates were wide open.  [I had] plenty of opportunity and time to spend delving into it.”

He started with small things.  The knife sheaths, then wallets.

“I was tired of sitting on a big, fat wallet.  I saw all these little front pocket wallet types, and there was one that was leather wrapped like this, and I really loved it.  And then it started splitting because the leather was cheap.  I had that scrap bucket of leather, and so I just doctored it up, made it pretty cool,” he says.

“After I had carried it for two years, it established this thing is rock solid, this is going to work, I need to make more of these,” White says.  “If there’s one thing that I make routinely, its these little card wallets.”

“After this came my own belt, and I still wear it today.”

“This is so not the case anymore,” he laments.  “When do you ever buy things that you get to keep for the rest of your life if you take care of them?  That was the appeal.”

Two years into his craft, White has developed the confidence and the clientele to reduce his corporate workdays down to three so that he can focus on leatherwork for the other half of his week.  For the last 12 years, White has been the Marketing Director at KCTC, a role that he is now scaling back.

“It’s a really great situation we have.  I get to work part time there.  I know the business so well, but it just wasn’t meeting all my needs anymore,” White says. 

For now, working at KCTC keeps the bills paid, but “If I want fun, if I want anything else, that’s my incentive to work hard,” he says.

“This is leaning on myself more.  Trying to see if I could make a business of my ideas,” White says, reflecting on his hybrid work arrangement. 

Like many people who want to transition from traditional employment to self-reliance and creative entrepreneurship, White finds that “there is no road to follow.” 

“I think that the whole COVID period just kind of let people recalibrate to what was eating most of their day, and what did it do for them in the end.  And then, now that you’ve taken a step back to look at it, if you would change it, how would it be different?  This is the chance.  This is the chance.  I couldn’t possibly live with myself knowing I never tried,” White says.

“It’s unnerving and I hate putting myself out there for others to critique,” he says, admitting that its difficult and uncomfortable to show and sell his leatherwork to people other than his friends and family.  “It’s good, though.  The more I do it, the better and more confident I become.”

The craftsman sees his mistakes, but the appreciative viewer sees the time and patience put into the neat hand stitches that meander over the cover of a faux book storage box, and the skill it takes to carve, color, and emboss a scaled dragon onto the front of wallet. 

White’s custom work impresses, and the clients he has created leather clothing and accessories for have become his evangelists.  More clients come to him, often asking him to make things he has never attempted before.  And White embraces the opportunity to expand his skills, to research and learn. 

As a result, White has made a wide variety of goods, from the small personal items he began with, to leather vests, helmets, masks, and costumes.  It seems there is nothing the self-taught, You-Tube assisted artist can’t learn to make, and perhaps that has caused him a bit of a problem.

“I’ve really just been very indecisive about which niche market I want to focus on.  I’d rather not pigeonhole myself, because I keep discovering things I didn’t even know I loved,” he says.

Leatherwork is an ancient craft no longer widely practiced.  Demand for it is high among many social groups.  Old-school motorcyclists, Renaissance Faire lovers, and anime cosplayers are a few the groups White has considered catering to with his work.  Regular folk who just want a pair of shoes personalized for bass fishing, or a butterfly- and flower-embossed belt for their sister, or a lion-carved wallet for their dad are all potential customers too.

Whatever direction White choses to direct his creativity and attention toward, its sure to be a fulfilling one that benefits himself and those fortunate to become custodians of his work, able to hand personal, well-loved items down from one generation to another.

“It was all kind of just the stars aligning,” he says of his new path forward.  “I don’t know if I ever planned any of it.  Finally, things just started falling into place where I was able to find people who wanted the things that I was doing and then create a space where I could actually dedicate [myself] to it.  It’s been a wild ride.”

Rory White sells his work under the name Rare Wits.  To view more of his work, visit his website, rarewits.com.  To order a custom-made item, contact him at (319) 936-7502 or rory@rarewits.com.