Wfought Leather 
THE DEN OF MR. JOHN JOSEPH ALTER’s RESIDENCE IN PHILADELPHIA 
The IValls , Ceilings and Screens covered with Sculptured Leather by The Basse Studios 
are cut open through about hah the thick¬ 
ness of the skin. After moistening the 
leather, the relief work is pushed out from 
the back with the fingers and the depression 
filled in with a pulp, so as to avoid the pos¬ 
sibility of the raised part receding. From 
the front, with a steel modeling tool, the de¬ 
tail is worked out in the plastic, damp 
leather. Afterward the leather is stained, 
painted or gilded. Mr. Busse will be rep¬ 
resented at the State Capitol at Harrisburg, 
where he is to make eight panels, illustrating 
the chief industries of the State, to be placed 
in the Lieutenant Governor’s room. 
The work of the Misses. Ripley, of New 
York, is built upon the old Mexican process 
of carved leather. 'This was introduced 
into California by the Mexicans who brought 
the art up from the South, where it may be 
traced back several centuries. Miss Anna 
C. Ripley and her sister have been at work 
for five years. Their progress is interesting 
as an economic problem, for they started in 
California with no capital but their work, and 
have established in these few years a paying 
business in New York. Their work is dis¬ 
tinctive in that they have not sought to re¬ 
produce an old art but to build up on what 
they could discover of the Mexican meth¬ 
ods of using the tools, a modern adaptation 
of old principles. The leather is moistened 
and the design cut with bold strokes of the 
knife and worked into relief by hammering 
into the leather with small dies around the 
design. This has the effect of raising the 
figures. Coloring and gilding are applied as 
a finishing process. 
The high technical standard of the hand- 
bound books made in the monasteries of 
Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries shows book-binding to be one of 
the noblest and most useful branches of 
leather work. Its revival knows no greater 
name than Cobden-Sanderson, of the Dove’s 
Bindery in London, under whose tutelage 
scores of successful bookbinders of the 
present day have done much that is digni¬ 
fied and noteworthy. 
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