Toy guns kept since childhood, a piano that’s been in the family for 100 years, a portable Viking record player, worn vintage tools, dented cowboy hats, and empty whiskey bottles line the wooden shelves at b.b gun leather studio in Strathcona.
Thrown together in an old wood-frame garage that is part creative space, part showroom, every inch illuminates the aesthetic influences of the two North Shore-born men behind a new leather-ware business called b.b gun. Musician Dustin Bentall, 32, and pal Spencer Baker, 28, recently launched the business with the line they call Life-Pieces, a collection of sturdy leather messenger bags, clutches, wallets, bowties, belts, backpacks, and purses all built to last a lifetime.
“The style hasn’t been as much deliberate as organic. It’s not like we sit down to AutoCAD on our computers,” Baker says about the tech-free studio space. “The most modern technology in our shop is the light bulb.”
B.b gun is a cocktail of western cool, old English class, and rock ‘n’ roll freedom, with a price point that ranges from $24.99 to $599.99.
The unisex messenger bag – called The Drifter – is one of their bestsellers. With his many connections and roots in the music business, Bentall, whose dad is famed Canadian rocker Barney Bentall, tells how Spirit of the West’s Geoffrey Kelly christened the bag.
“He’s Scottish, so he has this thing where he kind of makes up a name for everything,” explains Bentall, whose laid-back style is straight out of 1970s Laurel Canyon. “[Kelly] toured in a band called The Paperboys, and [bandmate] Tom Landa always had a side bag, a messenger bag, so he would call it ‘the drifter.’”
Bentall was having coffee with Kelly and when he showed him the messenger bag, Kelly said, “You gotta call it the drifter.”
Wearing a brown Henley shirt and jeans with his swept back red hair and trim beard, Baker expands on the type of leather they use at b.b gun.
“This is called vegetable-tan leather,” he says, referring to a b.b gun backpack. “Vegetable-tanned leather is the most natural way to preserve hides.”
Baker points to my tote, which is made with thin pliable leather.
“This is called chromium-leather, which uses heavy metals that preserve the hides,” he explains.
Chrome-tanning breaks down the leather in order to achieve the supple feel as opposed to it happening naturally over time, as it does with vegetable-tanning, Baker says. It’s harder on the environment compared to vegetable-tanning, an old-world process that uses tannic acids found naturally in plants.
“We like it because it will last forever. We like it because that’s how leather should look,” Baker says. “Leather shouldn’t be purple and perfectly smooth. We should see scars.”
They use just three colours: natural tan, which has a golden-beige hue; black, which is achieved through an old technique using vinegar and metal flakes from train tracks (for real); and ox blood, a red tone created with a water-based dye.
“No one uses this anymore,” Baker says, brushing a charcoal mixture from a mason jar onto a sample piece of tan leather to show how they get the black colour.
Not surprisingly, with Bentall’s many years in the biz, music is a constant in the b.b gun studio. Musician friends drop by for jam sessions or to pound out a few notes on the old piano. Even Father John Misty stopped by after a recent sold-out Commodore show, to play a few tunes in the studio garage. The guys have invited the CBC to film in the ambient space that welcomes some of the country’s best performers on any given night.
Along with encouragement from musician friends, they also look to local leather pioneer Ken Diamond as an inspiration in the tough world of artisanal leather.
“Most of all we are just supporting each other in a very hard tradition, because it is very expensive,” Baker says.
Carrying on tradition seems to be part of the personal ethos for Baker and Bentall – two old souls who have found a way to preserve the past by making pieces people will treasure now and in the future. Check out b.b gun online at bbgunleather.com.
