“Working freelance, it can be feast or famine,” Amir Badri tells me. Badri, a native Chicagoan, makes his living as a leather artisan. “You got to go out and hustle, shuck and jive, make cold calls, but I’ve been working the craft for long enough that word of mouth can pretty well sustain me. Someone needs something made, they ask around and someone tells them, ‘Go see Amir!’”
Amir Badri
amirbadri.com
instagram.com/_amirbadri
Badri was drawn towards artisanship from a young age.
“I’ve always known I was a hands-on person, since I was a kid,” he says. “My mom’s from Wisconsin, and my dad’s from Iran. My grandfather on my mom’s side was a woodworker, and from the very beginning, I was always in awe of his woodshop.”
Nevertheless, Badri pursued a degree in video game design—following in the footsteps of his older brother, a successful game designer—at the behest of their father, who felt a career in a tech-based industry offered greater financial stability. After graduating and going to work for a game studio, Badri took up leatherworking, at first treating it as a hobby. He was especially mindful of how he invested in materials.
“Leather is a luxury good, so it’s expensive. When you’re learning a craft you don’t want to blow good money on material when you know you’re gonna do a sloppy job with it,” he says. “I quickly figured out that in Uptown, where I was living at the time, at the beginning or end of the month, there were couches aplenty in the alleys. I would ride around on my bicycle with a box cutter, and I would salvage leather off the couches. The cushions are usually shot, sometimes the arms, but the back panel that’s always pushed up against the wall is pristine. ‘Skinning wild cows,’ I call it. A tip for when you’re at it: It’s an odd sight, and so it’s best you smile and wave at anyone walking by. Just don’t wave with the hand holding the box cutter.”
As his skill and interest grew, Badri decided to leave his job and enrolled in the Chicago School of Shoemaking and Leather Arts (CSOS).
Courtesy the artist
“I learned so much there, and it’s when I became sentient of the idea that you really do get out what you put in. I’d spend as much time there as I could. When my teachers had projects they were working on, I would volunteer to help them to have the extra opportunity to learn from them,” Badri says.
After completing the CSOS program, Badri found a position at Chicago luxury menswear brand Ashland Leather Company. The owners of Ashland Leather Company, Dan Cordova and Phil Kalas, are both veterans of the Horween Leather Company. Founded in 1905, Horween is the oldest continually operational tannery in Chicago. Ashland Leather Company uses Horween materials exclusively in the production of their products, allowing Badri to work with unique materials.
“They make a very rare type of leather called shell cordovan,” Badri says. “It takes 128 unique steps to make it. So I got a real crash course in leather and tannages working at Ashland Leather Company. I really cut my teeth on sewing, edge finishing, sanding, beveling, polishing, all of it. It was a luxury company, so everything had to come out of there looking mint; it was almost like being a plastic surgeon.”
He stayed with the company for two years, then considered striking out on his own.
“While I was working there I started listening to audiobooks—while the hands are busy, the ears are free. I’m dyslexic, and because of that, growing up I wasn’t assigned the same books as my peers in school,” he says. He set out to catch up, picking up Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. “I think it was the fact that it took place in Chicago that got to me. In the book, Jurgis Rudkus is killing the cows, and then the cows get processed, and some of those hides probably got sent to Horween and ended up right on the same workbench I was now sitting at, making wallets. It was galvanizing. It made me realize I wanted to be building something for myself and my family, not just working for somebody else.”
Courtesy the artist
Now Badri maintains an independent workshop in his home in Mayfair, replete with a laser cutter and a 1943 cast-iron Singer sewing machine (the same model that the Navy used to repair flight suits—“a real heavy-duty thing”). When he’s not working on restoring his two vintage Volvos or making art—Badri is also a sculptor and collage artist of note—he can be found honing new designs to meet the needs of his clients, making everything from custom book covers to watch bands and slipcases for lighters. There’s only one thing he enjoys more than custom work.
“I really love repair. Making repairs is the most fulfillment I get as a craftsman,” he says. “I have a philosophy about tiers of repair. The top of the tier is factory fresh. Complete restoration to original condition. Some things, however, can’t be repaired to that point, like when Notre Dame burned—now that’s a classic car that you can’t source the parts for. That glass was made by artisans that left bubbles and inclusions—there’s going to be some elements that are very difficult, if not impossible to replicate perfectly. Below factory fresh, you have the ship of Theseus—can you repair it well enough that nobody knows, no one can spot the repairs, even if they aren’t an exact restoration? Then under the ship of Theseus, you’ve got the Frankenstein. That’s when the original components aren’t available, but you can make do. And in a way, it’s my favorite. It’s where you get to exercise your skill, where the problem solving comes in. . . . I like to tell my clients, the work that I make for them has a lifetime warranty—but it’s my lifetime. As long as I’m here, if I made it, then I’ll repair it.”