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Newport right guard makes leather art
NEWPORT — Football is not the only passion of Robert Warren’s.
A starting right guard for Newport High School this season, Warren has also wrestled, dirt biked and hunted — the last of which the 16-yearold has done for half his life, about as long as he’s played football. Then, around February, he found that he needed a new sheath for his hunting knife.
“I saw some things online and was like, ‘I could easily do that,’” Warren said. “And then, once I made that one, I was like, ‘I enjoyed it.’ So I started doing it more and more and just kind of snowballed.”
That sheath was the first of many pieces of leather art Warren has made over the course of this year alone. Soon he learned how to make more gear out of leather — pouches for ammunition and mouth calls, holsters for guns and cell phones — and accessories such as wallets. Now, his pieces total around 40.
Moreover, Warren sells some of his pieces on Instagram under the brand name RW Leather Works, @rw_custom. leather. He makes them out of the basement of his Newport home, and all of his customers are Newport area locals, he said.
“I really enjoy just doing it,” Warren said. “Just the process of it.”
Learning how to work leather involved “lots of trial and error,” Warren said, adding that he taught himself through online research. He credits his parents with helping to find him materials.
“They’ve definitely been supportive through it,” Warren said.
When he makes a piece, he first measures out a template for each part to be stitched together; for a wallet, that means ensuring cards and cash fit into the leather itself. Then, he cuts the leather, sourced from Tandy Leather in Spokane, and stitches each part by hand using utility knives, hole punches and other tools.
After that, Warren customizes certain pieces with stamps. He’s stamped letters, numbers and punctuation for initials and dates, as well as grizzly bears — a reference to the Newport School District mascot.
“You soak the leather, get it wet and then you stamp it,” Warren said. “And that way when the leather dries, it’ll stay.”
Finally, he finishes the leather and edges of each piece, reducing wear over time.
Depending on the piece’s size and type of leather, Warren’s leather art ranges in price from $35 to $70 for wallets and from $90 to $120 for holsters. He makes some pieces as gifts for his loved ones.
“Just recently, a buddy of mine needed an ammo pouch for hunting,” Warren said. “So I made him one that goes on his belt and holds four rounds of ammo for his rifle.”
Warren is the only student taking Leather Art, a class offered by Newport Home Link, the Newport School District’s home learning program.
Students in Home Link choose from a variety of classes such as Leather Art, deciding how and what they want to study and working with a teacher to design their curriculum, program director Amanda Driver said.
In Warren’s case, his interest in leather art and family background in business — his mother and older brother own businesses too — led to him choosing Leather Art this year. The year-long class was established only a few years ago by another student who learned how to work leather from a local saddlemaker, Driver said.
“Robert is a good kid,” Driver said. “He’s pretty much an example of what a homeschool-parent partnership kid should be.”
Warren also takes classes at Spokane Community College through Running Start and plans to earn an associate’s degree alongside his high school diploma in the spring.
His classes at Spokane Community College are mostly general education, but after he graduates, he wants to pursue a bachelor’s degree in the medical field. Broken bones and shoulder problems from playing football, wrestling and crashing his dirt bike, he said, have inspired him to become a nurse anesthetist.
“I’ve been through a lot of surgeries,” Warren said. “And I always kind of thought that was a cool job to have.”
Even so, Warren said he will keep making leather art.
“I’m lucky enough to be able to have it as a class here and work on something I’m passionate about doing,” Warren said.
