The Mesquite Moon Speedy (Medium)

The barrel bag that presents genuine hair-on cowhide and two-tone hand tooled Western leather in the most sophisticated compositional relationship either material has occupied in this collection — salt and pepper cowhide center panel flanked by natural tan and dark brown two-tone hand tooled floral scroll and daisy rosette side panels, with black whipstitch edging and black top handles. This barrel bag is the piece in the collection that most directly demonstrates what happens when the two great material traditions of Western leather artisanship — the genuine animal hide of the cowhide and the hand carved vegetable-tanned leather of the tooling tradition — are brought together at the highest possible level of craft execution in a single bag composition. The center panel is genuine salt and pepper hair-on cowhide — the fine, dense, short-haired hide in the grey, cream, and black flecking pattern that is the most refined and most sophisticated of all the cowhide colorways, the cool grey tones and fine speckle pattern carrying a visual restraint and elegance that the bolder brown and white or black and white hides do not quite achieve. Against this cool, refined cowhide center, the two flanking side panels are hand tooled leather in the two-tone natural tan and dark brown treatment — the full Western floral scroll and daisy rosette vocabulary carved into the natural vegetable-tanned leather and antiqued with the dark brown pigment that fills the carved impressions and creates the maximum shadow-and-highlight contrast between the raised tan leather forms and the darkened carved depths. The daisy rosette medallions that anchor each side panel are the most technically demanding and most visually impressive single elements in the full tooling composition — the symmetrical, multi-petal flower form that requires precise, consistent tool placement to execute at the level of quality visible on these panels — and their placement as the primary design elements of each side panel gives the full bag composition its focal points, the eye finding the rosette at the center of each tooled panel before following the scroll and botanical forms that radiate outward from it in every direction. Black whipstitch runs along every edge of the bag in the hand-finished leather joining tradition that completes Western leather goods with the craft authenticity of a stitch placed by human hands. Black leather top handles provide the primary carry, their dark tone echoing the dark brown antiquing of the tooled panels and the black of the whipstitch in the color continuity that makes the full bag read as a complete, designed composition. Measures : 11” long x 8” deep