Brettuns Village
Trunks & Leather

Old Trunks, New Leather. 
All from Maine.

February 19, 2010

Greetings to all
of you who at one point in your life, apparently a

moment of weakness, decided
to sign up for the Brettuns Village e-mail

newsletter.  It must
be mid-winter here in Maine, because I don’t see

the snow anymore, even though
it’s there, and I don’t feel the cold

anymore, even though it’s
there, and I’ve stopped being excited about

how empty the roadways are,
seeing as how the tourists don’t seem to

be around at the moment. 
As we near the end of February we begin to

snap out of the winter coma
slowly, as Maine collectively comes to the

realization that the leaves
will come back and things will green up,

gardens will grow, and the
sun will feel warm, and all of this should

take place in a little under
10 more weeks.  I was driving to work

this morning about 5:30-ish
and thought I saw a hint of the sunrise,

so the days are getting
longer.  This is all pretty exciting.

A couple of news items that
I thought I’d pass along to you:  We’ve

added some new colors of
leather laces, 72-inchers, and we’re also now

selling some bundles of
100 mixed colors, broken into two basic

groups:  Earth tones
and Pastels.  These laces are really handy when

you need to tie this to
that or wrap a thing to make it more

you-know-what-I-mean or
hang up a dealy bopper by tying a knot and

hanging it over a doo-dad. 
Check out the Laces page to see the new

additions, please:

https://brettunsvillage.com/leather/laces.htm

A lot of folks buy tooling
bellies from us – these are trimmed bellies

of vegetable tanned cowhide,
6-7-8 ounce, firm, and are toolable,

formable, carvable, etceterable. 
Got in a new shipment of these, dyed

dark chocolate brown, at
the same price we’ve had stuck on these

things since we opened the
doors back in 1998. Bellies are about 6

feet long, variable in width,
and nice for straps, small projects, or

just wrapping around your
waist to make a fashion statement – a

statement that screams “lock
me up.’

Side leathers come and go
around this clam stand – and for those of

you who only recently fell
into the whirling vortex of leather

crafting a side is a highly
technical term that means ‘we cut the

cowhide in half so it’d
fit through smaller machines and drive down

our production costs, Jack’,
but a recently arrived side leather is a

doozy. It’s very dark brown,
oily, thick (6-7 oz), natural grain

surface, with a rustic,
outdoorsy, weathered look, and these sides run

large – every single one
of them is over 22 square feet of total

surface area.  The
color is called Maduro, just like the wrapper on

those expensive cigars they
keep up on that high shelf down at the

Hooch Market.  Maduro
is sure to be a hit, as evidenced by how they

started selling less than
an hour after we added them to the site.

Next new item is another
dark brown side leather, but this one isn’t

oily at all – it’s a nice,
smooth, naked leather (you can still see

the natural surface of the
leather through the finish) that’s nice and

soft, 4 oz thickness. 
We call it Smooth as a Moose because it’s

smooth and similar in color
to a Maine moose, which you really should

see this coming summer. 
These sides run about 18-20 sq ft and are

very, very nice.  A
great close-out lot that we were very glad to

receive.

Here’s a link to the page
where we sell our full hides and sides:

https://brettunsvillage.com/leather/sides.htm

New decorations on the glitzy
ditzies page, more rivets, and a few

other things here and there. 
The site, and the business, keep

growing, and we appreciate
your support.  When daughter #1 decides

which college will be lucky
enough to have her and we get that first

tuition bill in the mail
we’ll really appreciate your support, and you

can take that to the bank. 
Our bank.

I’ll get back to you in a
couple of weeks with some more updates.

Jenny says thanks to those
of you who have stopped by the shop while

you were upcountry on a
ski vacation or just touristing around – she’s

always glad to have visitors.
I can tell because that’s the only time

she gets up off her bed
now that duck season’s over.  Some dog, That

Dog.

Thanks a lot for reading
this drivel-

Churchill Barton

Purchasing Agent and Proud
Dad

Brettuns Village

Lewiston-Auburn, Maine

 

______________________________________________________________________

Rid your inbox of this filth
by replying with “Take me off this list”

in the subject line or simply
click triumphantly on the following

link: