Soft Touch
Leather worker has gained national attention for intricate work on tote bags
By Lee Farren
S
unshine spills through the
windows of the big workshop
behind the Stiles home on
Church Street in Condon. Music
plays softly in the background. The
warm smell of well-tanned leather
fills the air.
Leo Stiles works at a small
bench, tracing a floral pattern for
a handbag. KerryAnn Stiles, Leo’s
wife, sits at a nearby table with a pot
of green dye and a tiny paint brush,
delicately touching color onto a
piece of leather tooled with grass and
running horses.
Across the table her son, Arne
Bailey, taps with a little hammer,
beveling another design into a day
planner.
Leo, a lean, wiry man with
an engaging smile, has tooled
leather since the seventh grade,
when he made a gun belt for his
father’s birthday. Today, he and his
family earn their living turning
out purses, day planners, belts,
wallets, checkbook covers and Leo’s
signature tote bag, tooled with his
original double horseshoe design.
“Just about anything out of
tooling leather, we do,” Leo says.
It hasn’t always been like that.
Leo grew up in La Grande and
joined the U.S. Army in 1967.
He served for 14 years in Korea,
Vietnam and Europe.
At Fort Hood, Texas, he honed his
tooling and design skills under oldtime saddle maker Marty Taylor.
After leaving the Army in 1981,
Leo worked as an operations
manager for a San Francisco
sportswear company, making
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good money and traveling to Asia,
Australia and New Zealand.
“But I decided one day that this
wasn’t what I wanted to do with my
life,” he says. “It wasn’t worth the
stress and living in the city. I moved
back to Oregon, went into business
tooling leather, and I’ve been doing
it full time ever since.”
Leo settled in Corbett, where his
parents bought a small berry farm.
In 1985, he met KerryAnn when she
commissioned a wallet and stayed to
take a leather-working class.
“I hadn’t worked leather before,”
KerryAnn says. “I just thought it was
such a neat art, and Leo did such a
beautiful job on the wallet he made.”
The couple married in 1986.
In 2005, they started looking for
property in Eastern Oregon.
“I had a dream, and in the dream
I saw the roof of this house,” Leo
says. “When KerryAnn and I came
to Condon, we drove down this back
street and I saw the same roofline. I
told KerryAnn to stop the truck and
told her about my dream. We drove
around the block and the house was
for sale. We made an offer the next
day, and 35 days later it was ours.”
Soon after, Leo got his big break.
He was wrapping up a display
at the Oregon State Fair when a
New York fashion writer, Clyde
Ray Brual, stopped at his booth and
asked if Leo made custom bags.
“I said, if it’s out of tooling leather
I can pretty much make it,” Leo says.
“I gave him one of my business cards
and, as he walked away, I thought,
‘I’ll never see him again.’”
But Brual called a month later and
ordered a leather copy of a canvas
tote bag he sent to Leo as a model.
After numerous phone calls and
faxes, Leo created the bag with a
double horseshoe design that reflects
his love of traditional Western floral
motifs.
Left, Leo Stiles works
in his Condon shop.
Below, the “Leo
Tote” has become the
mainstay of Leo Stiles
Western Creations.
Leo created the double
horseshoe design to
take advantage of the
way the bag is laid
out and his love of
traditional Western
floral motifs. Opposite
page, more of Leo’s
handiwork.
Brual liked the bag and ordered
another for a friend. Brual then
wrote a short article on Leo and his
totes for the October 2006 issue of
Departures, an in-flight
magazine that also
goes to American
Express
members
worldwide.
“The day the
magazine came
out, we started
getting phone
calls,” Leo says.
“For the first
two weeks,
we averaged
10 calls a day.
A lot of them
were just inquiries, but a lot of them were orders.
The momentum has kept going, too.
We still get calls from people who
have torn that article out of the magazine and kept it.”
The “Leo tote,” in four different
sizes, is now the mainstay of Leo’s
business. He uses only American-
made materials, favoring Hermann
Oak leather for its superb tooling
and carving characteristics.
Every item from Leo’s workshop
comes with a certificate of
authenticity.
The Departures story
brought in so much
business that
Leo realized he
needed a better
way for customers
to contact him
and see what he
could do.
“Two years
ago, I didn’t even
know how to turn
a computer on,”
Leo says. “Today
the Internet is what
keeps our business going. With the
volume of business we do on the East
Coast, the Internet was our ticket.”
Leo still feels unsure around the
computer—a hired Web designer
keeps things updated—and likes
to consult over the telephone for
custom-made items.
“I like the personal touch of
conversation,” Leo says. “I can tell
a lot about what people want by
talking to them.”
The workshop is busiest from
September to early December,
shipping four to six large items
each week. After Christmas, the
Stileses take a break and head south
for Arizona, where Leo works on
jewelry at the Quartzite Gem and
Mineral Club.
When in Condon, he offers
an adult leather tooling class on
Tuesday evenings from 5 to 7 p.m.
“I love Condon,” Leo says. “I can
go for walks in town and everybody
knows me. With the Web site, we
can be anywhere. In the spring and
summer and early fall, I wouldn’t
want to be anyplace else.” 
Leo Stiles’ work will be on display at the
Clackamas County Fair Pioneer Village
in Canby, August 12-17, and at the
Native American Cowboy Art Festival
in Sisters, September 5-7. Go to www.
stileswesternleather.com or call (541)
384-2091 for more information.
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