Jim Linnell Class in Miles City, Montana

On May 8th and 9th, 2009, Jim Linnell taught a leather carving class at the historic Miles City Saddlery in Miles City, Montana. Jim taught students from Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota to carve the buffalo picture that was featured on the cover of a recent Tandy Leather catalog. Jim started out by showing us how to carve his version of an old Ken Griffin pattern. This was really fitting for this class because Ken Griffin had been a carver at Miles City early in his leather career. Once we finished the floral carving, we started carving and embossing the buffalo. The next day we finished carving the buffalo and colored the whole picture. This was a really fun class. I knew several of the students from previous classes we had taken together, and make a few new friends too. During the class we had an opportunity to look at several examples of Jim's art work.



Jack Deibel, current owner of the saddlery also brought in several pieces of leather work to show off during the class. One of these was an original carving by Ken Griffen that appeared in his book, Ken Griffin's Scrapbook.




At the conclusion of the class, Jim gave the picture he created in the class to Jack as a thank you for his hospitality letting us use his store for a classroom for the weekend.



Here is a picture of all the students from the class and thier completed projects. They all look different, but they all turned out very nice and I think everyone was really happy. It's always fun to hear someone say, "I can't believe I did that!"