Hello from China

[JohnBarton]

Hello from Xiamen China.

My name is John Barton and I have been making cases since I was 12 years old. Since I was 22 I have been making pool cue cases.

I started all by myself in Germany in a little attic room on the cue cases and graduated to a small company with annual production of several thousand leather cases a year. Sold it in 2003 and took a few years off.

Now I live in China and work for a billiard supply company. My other business is again cue casemaking. I have a little shop and several talented toolers to do the decorative work.

I thought you all might be interested to see some of our work and some of the work that some of the best Chinese toolers are doing.

Here is our website www.jbcases.com All critique is welcome.

Also, not to be defensive but you know how stereotypes go, these cases are not made in any kind of sweatshop environment. My workshop is in my apartment and the tooling is done by individuals who have their own shops and do their own tooling. I chose to live here because I can create products and get them made faster if I am a few hours away from the factories instead of a half a world away. For my cue cases I still make them the same way I did when I had that first little workshop in my German attic, individually, but with more individuals if you know what I mean. :-)

Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to hire my first tooler to work with me permanently in my workshop. This will greatly increase our decorative capabilities.

I don't do the tooling. I do design and make the cases though alongside my colleagues. Anyway, this is what we do,

enjoy and thank you Johanna and Kate for maintaining such a wonderful resource. Hopefully I can be a contributer in some ways.

John

www.jbcases.com

Edited January 14, 2008 by JohnBarton

[wildrose]

Great work! I liked the other pics of it on your site too.

[Drac]

very topnotch and impressive! makes me want to take up pool again just so I can have an excuse to try to make a case! *L* hmmm... I DO still have me darts though...

[wolvenstien]

very topnotch and impressive! makes me want to take up pool again just so I can have an excuse to try to make a case! *L* hmmm... I DO still have me darts though...

LOL, yeah, I gave up pool too, but I still have my darts....

John, nice case, very nice collaborative work.

[Don101]

Hi John welcome to the forum we are glad you found us, there are some realy nice cases on your site lovely work, Don

[Beaverslayer]

Welcome to the forum John, it's real good to have you here. As the others said, you have some nice work there on your site.

Ken

[TheTrooper]

Hello John, good to have you also on this site.

Regards from germany,

Marcel

Edited January 18, 2008 by adamant-leather

[Maeshin]

Pleased to meet you ^_^

That case looks beautiful; quite graceful.

[David Genadek]

John,

This is the first tooling I've seen out of China. I was just in Thailand and was extremly impressed with the quality of cratsmanship I saw there. I did stop in one leather shop in Chiang Mai and talked to a tooler there. He was totaly self taught and had never seen anyone else tool yet his work was very good. He was using some leather from Australia and it was not as nice as what we get here. Is your veg tanned comeing from China or elsewhere?

Are these toolers just doing work for you or are they finding demand in other areas too? In Thailand I saw some of the best copiers I have ever seen but didn't see a whole lot of cutting edge creativity there. Is it similier in China?

David Genadek

[JohnBarton]

John,

This is the first tooling I've seen out of China. I was just in Thailand and was extremly impressed with the quality of cratsmanship I saw there. I did stop in one leather shop in Chiang Mai and talked to a tooler there. He was totaly self taught and had never seen anyone else tool yet his work was very good. He was using some leather from Australia and it was not as nice as what we get here. Is your veg tanned comeing from China or elsewhere?

Are these toolers just doing work for you or are they finding demand in other areas too? In Thailand I saw some of the best copiers I have ever seen but didn't see a whole lot of cutting edge creativity there. Is it similier in China?

David Genadek

The veg tan comes from Australia, the USA, Brazil?, and from China. The leather for the one I pictured was imported but I don't know from where. The leather brokers here aren't too keen on providing a paper trail of where the leather comes from. :-)

In China there seems to be several shops that are what I would call slash and burn tooling shops who take the patterns from Tandy books and throw them on wallets/purses and the like and try to move them for $30-100 on the Chinese version of Ebay. They generally employ around 20 people of which the tooling is spread out amongst them. - give you an example - I had one of these shops do a case for me and they took one stem pattern and just repeateded it 14 times on the case and then didn't even bother to get it even on any of the pieces -

Then there are the individuals who do their own work, have their own shops and try to come up with innovative ways to tool. There are many of those as well and they have an active forum where they share their work and tutor each other. These are the folks I work with.

I have seen some pretty cool stuff here but I wouldn't know if it was copied from someone else or not. The stuff I am showing you are things I haven't come across anywhere else.

From what I understand Chinese tooling is largely influenced by the Taiwanese who have set up a few schools here to teach the art of western style tooling. There are books which refererence Chinese tooling on leather that was done entirely in China long ago but I have yet to find any modern practicioner of this style or any real life example thereof. I did find in a mall some carved leather goods from Northern China that had their own style to them. I didn't know enough Chinese to ask the seller if these were authentic local goods or products of a production shop somewhere. I guess the latter and am pretty sure the salesman would have told me the former.

Anyway here are three of the pieces done in China that I found to be most interesting.

[David Genadek]

John,

Do your have the Url for thier forum? My daughter studies chinese and she can translate for me.

I wonder if there is a program that could bridge the language gap that would allow them to join this forum?

I was wondering about the leather because when I looked at the work the skill level seemed high but still it was missing a crispness which I thought was the leather.I saw the same thing in Thailand with the carver I met there. He let me try his leather which was from Australia and it was tough stuff. I just sent him some sharp tools to see if it helps. I will go back later this year and hope to get to try some of the leathers with sharp tools to see if it is as bad as it seemed.

I know Bill Gomer went to Tiawan to teach carving.

I find the quality of design very interesting. I really think our culture has lost a lot of fundamental design sense. It is like we just don't have the correct mind set in the US to do really great work any more. I don't mean it doesn't exsist on an individual basis but as culture you will not find a group of people that would work for a company to do great craftsmanship. It is a major issue in the saddle industry right now which I beleave leaves the industry wide open for the east to come in and gain market share. India has made an effort but that culture seems to lack an understanding of form to function so they have not been able to penetrate anything but the lower tears of the market.

David Genadek

[JohnBarton]

John,

Do your have the Url for thier forum? My daughter studies chinese and she can translate for me.

I wonder if there is a program that could bridge the language gap that would allow them to join this forum?

I was wondering about the leather because when I looked at the work the skill level seemed high but still it was missing a crispness which I thought was the leather.I saw the same thing in Thailand with the carver I met there. He let me try his leather which was from Australia and it was tough stuff. I just sent him some sharp tools to see if it helps. I will go back later this year and hope to get to try some of the leathers with sharp tools to see if it is as bad as it seemed.

I know Bill Gomer went to Tiawan to teach carving.

I find the quality of design very interesting. I really think our culture has lost a lot of fundamental design sense. It is like we just don't have the correct mind set in the US to do really great work any more. I don't mean it doesn't exsist on an individual basis but as culture you will not find a group of people that would work for a company to do great craftsmanship. It is a major issue in the saddle industry right now which I beleave leaves the industry wide open for the east to come in and gain market share. India has made an effort but that culture seems to lack an understanding of form to function so they have not been able to penetrate anything but the lower tears of the market.

David Genadek

Here is the link to their forum: http://bbs.leathercraft.cn/

I think that the assembly line shops here don't put out work that is very good. They basically take people off the street and teach them the basics of carving or stamping or whatever their "area" is going to be and that's what they do all day. I can only hope that some good leather workers have come out of that environment to found their own shops.

Here is a not so good picture of a carved and embossed case we are about to finish. This is one of our toolers who has pretty much free license to design and explore.

[Brandon]

That's the legendary Wu Song killing the tiger with his bare hands!

Thank you for sharing, John.

Brandon

[JohnBarton]

Hello John, good to have you also on this site.

Regards from germany,

Marcel

Hi Marcel,

I can't wait to see your first case. Get to it already :-)

[David Genadek]

That is way cool!!!

I took a quick look at thier forum and bam right away came across a great example of using positive and negetive space to play with the eye. That is such a great use of that stamp.

US carvers watch out for China!

David Genadek

[John D Dennehy]

Hello John,

Beautiful work. I looked at your site and saw the name of an old friend of the family. If I can find them I wil dig out a couple of pics of Chas and send them to you. When I showed him one of them he damn near fell off the chair and begged for a copy.

I hope to see more of your work.

[bobocat]

The veg tan comes from Australia, the USA, Brazil?, and from China. The leather for the one I pictured was imported but I don't know from where. The leather brokers here aren't too keen on providing a paper trail of where the leather comes from. :-)

In China there seems to be several shops that are what I would call slash and burn tooling shops who take the patterns from Tandy books and throw them on wallets/purses and the like and try to move them for $30-100 on the Chinese version of Ebay. They generally employ around 20 people of which the tooling is spread out amongst them. - give you an example - I had one of these shops do a case for me and they took one stem pattern and just repeateded it 14 times on the case and then didn't even bother to get it even on any of the pieces -

Then there are the individuals who do their own work, have their own shops and try to come up with innovative ways to tool. There are many of those as well and they have an active forum where they share their work and tutor each other. These are the folks I work with.

I have seen some pretty cool stuff here but I wouldn't know if it was copied from someone else or not. The stuff I am showing you are things I haven't come across anywhere else.

From what I understand Chinese tooling is largely influenced by the Taiwanese who have set up a few schools here to teach the art of western style tooling. There are books which refererence Chinese tooling on leather that was done entirely in China long ago but I have yet to find any modern practicioner of this style or any real life example thereof. I did find in a mall some carved leather goods from Northern China that had their own style to them. I didn't know enough Chinese to ask the seller if these were authentic local goods or products of a production shop somewhere. I guess the latter and am pretty sure the salesman would have told me the former.

Anyway here are three of the pieces done in China that I found to be most interesting.

at first,thank you like my staff.

I come from taiwan.

I do the job almost 20 years

the staff is made by myself.

some picture is drew by myself.

so some pictures are not at the book you have seen.

the picture of girl is used from the book

the name of author is mucha.

He is one of my favorite authors.

I used his picture and crafted by my own method.

the id of cool cat you see is the nick name I use online at China.

the picture you see is I show the picture to them when I go to China to teach them at the begining.

thank you like my staff again.

[ArtS]

I like that saddle purse! Never thought of saddle bags on one.

ArtS

[bobocat]

I like that saddle purse! Never thought of saddle bags on one.

ArtS

yes,the bag is really specially.

the type of bag is designed by the japanese teacher of my friend.

I like the feeling of the bag.

I designed the pattern on the leahter and crafted it.

I have the other angle of picture.

I will upload the picture to show you.

Edited August 1, 2008 by bobocat

[CAFcue]

Hi John...welcome