Beware Of Maltese Leather

[WinterBear]

I've had more problems myself with stolen pictures by someone here in the States that from anywhere else. Not pictures of leatherwork, but of custom quilts, where they were trying to pass it off as their own work.

Generally, the local sharps are more of a nuicance to the people around here anyways.

For instance, in my neck of the woods, it's the start of Frontier Week and there are out-of-towners and hard-core tourists from all over, well, all over! There will be a lot of vendors and street-corner sellers who will be selling machine embossed belts as "hand tooled" to the tourists this week. A lot of laminated/bonded/poorly dyed leather/leather clone is going to be sold as high-end product. Jewelry too--a lot of "silver" isn't--nickle plate, electroplate over brass, and pot metal. And in the long run, that sort of product, and the seller who cheats the public, really hurts the local craftsfolk when they lose sales to tourists who wind up with an inferior product and then assume all of the products being sold are of that same low quality.