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"Don't confuse leather carving with leather tooling," Mrs. Kahlen told me recently. "Let me show you the difference."

She picked up a tooled leather book jacket which she had made in high school. "See how hard it is to see the design?" she asked. "That's because tooling only presses the design into the leather, and over the years it has gradually smoothed itself out."

Mrs. Kahlen displayed a beautiful leather notebook cover with a picture of a horse deeply carved in it. "Here the design is carved right into the leather—it will last the lifetime of the leather itself," she explained.

MRS. KAHLEN got her start in leather carving during the years she and her husband lived in a trailer, following construction jobs around the country.

"Alben was a construction foreman," she explained, "and we seldom stayed in one place more than eighteen months. Because it didn't pay to rent a house at each new job, we lived in the trailer. We have no children, so for a long time I filled my spare time with knitting. But I didn't find it creative enough, and I began to get bored with it.

"I decided that it might be fun to take up weaving instead. We were in Peoria, Illinois, at the time, so I went to Tac-Town, a school of arts and crafts, to sign up for a weaving class. Before I enrolled, however, I noticed a display of leather articles—and I forgot all about the weaving!"

Mrs. Kahlen enrolled in the leather class instead, and after a few lessons had mastered all the principles of leather carving. She advanced so rapidly that soon the teacher wasn't able to teach her any more. She branched out into designs and techniques of her own.

One evening the director of the school took her aside and offered her the leather-craft teacher's job.

"To say I was flattered is an understatement," Mrs. Kahlen recalled, "but I refused the job. By then I was so in love with leather carving that I would have resented the hours spent in teaching others."

Lillian Kahlen doesn't believe that a teacher can do much anyway, beyond teaching the basic principles of carving.

"From there on," she said, "it's practice, practice, practice. Nobody can teach you. as much as you can teach yourself."

IN THE craft school, Mrs. Kahlen used the ready-made patterns sold in leather findings stores. Her creative mind rebelled at this, because wherever she met leather work, she. met duplicates.

"I decided to make originals and adapt designs from other sources to leather carving," she said, "so that I could feel I had something nobody else had."

Making original designs doesn't mean that Mrs. Kahlen has had to study art. In fact, no artistic talent is required, other than the ability to arrange designs with an eye to good composition. Lillian's adapted designs are taken from wallpaper, drapery material, pictures in seed catalogs, tree leaves, photographs, or anything else a customer wants duplicated.

The design to be copied is covered with a piece of tracing paper and the pattern traced through. A pattern for a handbag, for instance, may combine a leaf from a wallpaper sample, a flower from a seed catalog, and a background figure taken from drapery materials. When all the different parts are on tracing paper, Mrs. Kahlen makes copies of it for her files, because this tracing-paper pattern can only be used once.

She prepares the leather by soaking it first in water. This revives the juices of the leather so that the fibers hold together and preserve the pattern permanently. Mrs. Kahlen then wraps the piece in oiled paper and stores it in her refrigerator overnight, until the leather is almost back to its original color.

"My husband and the teen-age brother and sister who board with us never come downstairs for midnight snacks without a good light," Mrs. Kahlen said with a laugh. "What looks like a piece of roast beef may turn out to be the leather for a handbag!"

THE DESIGN is traced on the prepared leather by placing the paper pattern on top of the leather and scoring in the design with a stylus, right through the paper.

And then comes the carving, beginning with the background design. The first tool used is a "backgrounder" or a "camouflager." The tools are chrome plated steel bars about half the size of a pencil, tipped with a patterned stamp. The pattern is pounded into the leather with a rawhide-covered mallet. The background and camouflage tools usually have a fine pattern of circles or lines which Mrs. Kahlen stamps in all over the background area of her design.

The edges of leaves and flower petals are cut in with a razor-sharp tool which cuts in about half the thickness of the leather. Next, a beveling tool is pounded along the cut lines of the background side, which depresses the background and makes the leaf or flower stand out in relief.

Each part of the design has a special tool to form it. Veiners form leaf veins, shaders shade petals and anything else that needs shadow effect, turn-backs undercut the rolled edges of leaves so that they actually look as if they were rolled over. There are special-effects tools such as stars, whole flowers, entire leaf sprays, bucking broncos, acorns, the Masonic emblem, the fleur-de-lis, the head of a deer, and many others, which simplify the work for a beginner, and help an expert like Mrs. Kahlen to speed up her work. These stamps perform the work of several tools in one operation.

Mrs. Kahlen has perhaps 150 tools, representing a $500 investment. The designs range in price from 50 cents for a single dot background tool, to $5 for the bucking bronco, although most of the tools are in the $1 to $2 range.

"But just because I have a lot of tools, that doesn't mean everyone must have a lot," said Mrs. Kahlen. "Although the fancy tools make the work faster, even the fancy designs can be carved with a few carefully selected tools. The bucking bronco, for example, could be carved with two or three very simple tools."

A good basic assortment for a beginning craftsman would include a professional swivel cutter, a checked bar grounder, a tap beveler, a pear shader, a camouflager, a veiner, a shell, and two seeders. A kit containing these can be purchased for about $10.95.

WHEN A carved design has been completed, the leather is washed with oxalic acid, dried, and then coated with clear lacquer, for stain resistance. The item is then lined carefully.

Mrs. Kahlen uses the best leather she can find in lining her products. She uses lizard-grained leather, suede, and unborn calf on heavier items such as book covers, brief cases, and handbags. Wallets, shoes, and other items where thickness is undesirable, are lined with skiver, a thin layer of flexible leather which is literally "skinned" off the back of cowhide.

Before a handbag or wallet can be lined, holes for the lacing are punched in the leather with a sharp tool which cuts several holes at once. Then the lining, with any desired pockets or zipper compartments already sewn in, is fastened with rubber cement. In the case of a handbag, the lining is smoothed over and over again as Mrs. Kahlen folds the flat piece of leather into the proper shape for a bag, to prevent dirt-catching creases in the lining. After the cement has dried, the lacing holes must be repunched so that they run through the lining as well as through the outside leather.

One of Mrs. Kahlen's special designs, an embossed rose, requires padding in addition to the usual lining. The rose is carved on the front of the leather, then worked from the reverse side to bring the rose out in high relief. Then the raised rose is padded with cotton and the usual lining applied over it.

"ONE OF newest 'Exclusives by Lillian' is carved leather shoes," said Mrs. Kahlen.

Shoes are one of the most profitable items Mrs. Kahlen makes. They take only $4 worth of material, and sell for $75. The shoemaker who forms the carved leather into shoes charges Mrs. Kahlen $30, so the profit is approximately $41 for one or two days' work.

"I ask a customer to bring in a pair of shoes which fit her well and in a style she likes," Mrs. Kahlen related, "and I make a paper pattern of the parts of the shoe which will be carved in leather. I follow the usual procedure in tracing and carving, except that I use a piece of leather just slightly larger than the pattern calls for, in order to allow the shoemaker a little leeway."

After the shoemaker has partially finished the shoe, the customer comes in for one or two fittings to make certain the straps are in the right place.

The shoemaker's $30 charge includes all the parts necessary for completing the shoe. All Mrs. Kahlen provides is the carved leather for the outside of the shoe.

"I was lucky in finding John Schmittner, who is probably Milwaukee's best custom shoemaker," Mrs. Kahlen said. "I asked at the leather store where I buy my materials if they knew of a custom shoemaker, and they recommended Mr. Schmittner."

Mrs. Kahlen also makes book covers carved in a design to fit the mood of the book. She sells these covers for $25 each. They are often copied from the paper book jacket. Her cover design for Fulton Oursler's "The Greatest Story Ever Told," however, is an original. It is a full-length portrait of Christ with his arms outstretched. On the back cover is a spray of Easter lilies.

"Faces are the most difficult thing to carve," said Mrs. Kahlen, "and a whole design can be ruined by getting the wrong expression on a face. This portrait of Christ took a lot longer to carve than any other design of similar size."

The name of the book is not carved into this particular cover, so it could be used as a cover for a Bible, prayer book, or favorite hymnal, or any other appropriate religious book.

MRS KAHLEN first began marketing her products by giving them to friends and relatives who worked in large factories or department stores. People who admired the strikingly beautiful items placed orders, and Mrs. Kahlen's business increased steadily as more and more people showed her products around. She makes a practice of inserting two or three of her business cards in a pocket of a handbag or wallet, so that admirers will immediately know where to place their orders. Her handbags bring $60 and $70 each, and she charges $10 for a wallet.

One of the people who admired Mrs. Kahlen's work when it was shown by a friend was Dorothy Witte, a feature writer for the women's page of the Milwaukee Journal.

"Miss Witte called me one day and asked if I would bring some samples of my work down to the Journal," said Mrs. Kahlen. "I went down with a suitcase full of things, and she decided right then and there that she wanted to do an article about me in the Sunday Journal."

A number of things happened as a result of that article. First, Beulah Donohue, who conducts a woman's program over WTMJ-TV, Milwaukee's only television station, called Mrs. Kahlen and asked to feature her on a half hour program, showing all the steps in leather carving.

"I was scared stiff," Mrs. Kahlen acknowledged, "but I saw what wonderful publicity it would be, so I agreed."

Take it from one of the fascinated viewers of the program that Mrs. Kahlen didn't look the least bit, nervous, and I'm sure leather carving won many new devotees.

Another call came from the producer of the wrestling telecasts from WTMJ-TV. He wanted to interview her during one of the program intermissions.

"I don't know if the program brought me any customers," Mrs. Kahlen said with a smile, "but I'm certain it reached an entirely different audience.

Also as a result of the newspaper article, many people ordered handbags, belts, wallets, and many other things, and Lillian Kahlen was again asked to instruct people in leather carving. She is still holding out against the pleas of her would-be pupils.

However, when the owner of the leather findings store where Mrs. Kahlen shops asked her to demonstrate leather carving at Milwaukee's annual hobby show in August, Lillian agreed to do that much.

"It was fun to get out and meet people," Mrs. Kahlen recalled. "Leather carving is a rather solitary hobby."

Mrs. Kahlen has had offers from stores in the Merchandise Mart in Chicago to purchase her work. They offered to buy her product at her retail price and take their own mark-up.

"The catch," she said, "is that they want a hundred handbags at a time, and I simply couldn't provide that many every month or so, unless I set up a small factory.

"I have also had good offers from small, exclusive shops here in Milwaukee which would handle a smaller number of items. This sort of market is a good thing for the beginning craftsman. He can show samples of his work to shop owners in his city and will get orders, if the quality of his work is high.

"Personally, I prefer to sell to individual customers. I'm not trying to make a big business out of it, but it seems to be heading in that direction all by itself. My husband is getting a little annoyed—I even take along a couple of wallets to lace when we drive up to Northern Wisconsin for a weekend of fishing!"

MRS. KAHLEN works at her craft from 6 o'clock in the morning to 11 o'clock at night, with time off for meals, about four days a week.

"But I still consider it a hobby," she said, "because I don't have to do it!"

Even with these long hours, Mrs. Kahlen must "farm out" such parts of the work as the lacing, in order to keep up with the customers.

The lacing, too, has its unique touch. Mrs. Kahlen has taught her sister-in-law to do "Mexican basket weave" lacing, which will never unravel. This is used on all items except wallets, where the more common, and less bulky, buttonhole lacing is used. A laced, lined woman's belt sells for $20, a contour belt for $15. Men's belts are priced at $7.50.

Often Mrs. Kahlen's exclusive designs are requested in matched sets—belt, handbag, and shoes—and she believes that encouraging the sales of matched sets has increased her business.

To others who are interested in leather carving, Lillian Kahlen is most generous with help. She suggests "The Art of Leather Carving," by Ken Griffen, as an excellent beginner's text. This is not a book, but rather an envelope of patterns with instructions for making each. "Operation Leather Carving," by Al Shelton, offers more advanced designs. Both books, as well as all the tools, leather, patterns, and other supplies one needs, are available at leather findings shops, art stores, and craft shops in most cities, or from mail order houses.

"It pays to buy leather by the 'side,' which is half a hide," Mrs. Kahlen says. "The cost varies from 90 cents to $1.75 a square foot for most leather, and averages $1 a foot, although unborn calf goes as high as $3 a square foot. A 'side' is usually about 23 square feet."

Mrs. Kahlen advises using only the best leather for carving. "It's easier to work with, and it gives quality products," she says.

Beginners are advised to practice on ready-made patterns before using their own designs.