That Plato was a pretty smart guy. He made that observation some 2,400 years ago, and it still holds water today. Geoffrey Franklin, a native of the Portland, Oregon area, now based on the state’s coast, underscored that wisdom back in 2008 when he started riding his bicycle to his job as an architect. Finding himself in need of some leather handlebar wraps like he’d seen in a book about vintage Italian bikes, but unable to find anything like them on the market, Geoffrey created his own.
Then the economy went south and Geoff got laid off. His wife, Valerie Franklin, posted some of Geoff’s creations on Etsy and they were delighted by the immediate indications that there was indeed a market for handmade, leather bike accessories. The business grew and today they run it fulltime, working out of a home office and garage workspace.
The Franklins named their handmade business Walnut Studiolo. Walnut comes from the name of one of Geoff’s earlier businesses, an architectural firm, and Studiolo is an Italian architectural term for a small room devoted to reading or study. “I’m a self-admitted architecture nerd,” Geoff quips.
Walnut Studiolo’s online catalog now features dozens of products, including leather blueprint tubes, whiskey or wine cases, headphone organizers, business card cases and 11 styles of drawer pulls. The cribbage board belt is a handcrafted item, made from American tanned bridle leather that not only holds up your trousers, but when you take it off it doubles as an on-the-go cribbage board. The belt’s design features a two-lane, 60-point cribbage track.
The architect also believes that a flaw in the hide can instill character in a leather creation. “It’s more personal and less precious that way,” he observes. Valerie adds that it’s a practice of the Japanese Wabi Sabi theory of design, an aesthetic that centers on transience and imperfection.