All About Our Canvas and Colours!

Waxed Canvas is a cotton canvas with wax embedded into the fibers. The wax darkens the colour of the textile, and makes it water resistant, giving it protection from the elements. It also shows marks of use, giving it the charming rugged look that we were drawn to fifteen years ago when we started Peg and Awl, and continue to love as we use it throughout the years!

We have been compiling the most frequently asked questions about waxed canvas. We’ve included photographs to illustrate our answers, especially with colour!

What Are The Marks On My Bag? Waxed canvas looks cozy and worn in from the start, because of the crazing – the creases and marks – that show up with use. Some colours are craze-ier than others! The Coal is the least mark prone, and shows the most dust and pet hair in the beginning, but with use, as with all the colours, the wax works its way into the cotton fibers, protecting it from the elements, including pet hair.

Can You Make a Sendak In _____? We use two different canvas weights – one for the Sendak and another for our Bags. The Sendak canvas is thinner and lighter because of all of the layers and intricacies of the artist roll. Some limited colours are only available in one weight. This is why we may introduce a colour in Bags that we don’t offer in Sendaks, and vice versa.

Why is this Canvas Softer that the Others? Most of our canvas comes from Fairfield Textile, and the waxiness is fairly consistent, but we love finding new colours and new manufacturers, so there can be variation in the canvases. Sweetshrub, Radish, and Rook are all a little softer and waxier than the others at first, but again, all wax works its way into the fibers with use.

Why Is The Colour Different? The wax reflects lighting differently so the range of tone in the photographs reflects the range of tone you may perceive in life. The colours may vary slightly from batch to batch because they are hand dyed. The wax will fade with use and the colour of the bag will lighten and evolve. We love all of this. Your bags will change through use, giving each one a one-of-a-kind patina with the stories and marks from your life!

Warm: Truffle, Spice, Hickory Colour Comparison

Waxed Canvas Swatch Books!

We use two different canvas weights for our Sendaks and Bags. The Sendak canvas is thinner and lighter. The colours vary between the weights, and sometimes we cannot find the same colour in both, and sometimes, the 'same' colour isn’t the same at all — as in the case of Sweetshrub (Sendak) and Sumac (Bags). They are close, but the canvas weight and wax makes the colour different enough that we decided to give them different names. 

Bag Canvas Classic Colours

Bag Canvas Small Batch Colours

Sendak Canvas Classic Colours

Sendak Canvas Classic Colours

Sumac (Left) and Sweetshrub (Right) Colour Comparison

Our Leather

We use black and brown vegetable-tanned leather from Wickett and Craig for our bags and Sendaks. Fog and All Black are paired with black leather and all other colours are paired with brown leather.

We can do any leather and canvas combination that you wish! Just email us or write your request in your order notes. Please note, these are considered special orders and are not returnable.

Watch the instructions on how to adjust and secure the leather straps on The Franklin Maker’s Apron. 

The Franklin is available in two sizes, and the suspender-style vegetable tanned leather straps and belt have multiple settings to comfortably fit a variety of statures. Once on, The Franklin Maker’s Apron becomes a part of you, bringing the perfect mix of order, utility, and aesthetics to the creative chaos of a maker’s daily routine!

Our bags are made with full-grain vegetable-tanned leather*, which is a durable leather that develops a lovely patina over time with continued use. It is thicker than conventional, chrome-tanned leather, which also lends it to be more stiff in the beginning. This video shows how to quickly soften the leather, as well as the proper steps for detaching and attaching the leather shoulder strap and front closure on our Peg and Awl bags.

One of the key steps to speed up the breaking in process of leather is to simply twist and roll the leather in your fingers. As you use your bag the leather will naturally soften and become much easier to maneuver. Whether you help it out, or simply use your bag, the breaking in process does not take long!!

*What is Vegetable Tanned Leather? Vegetable tanning is a slow, natural, and sustainable process of tanning raw hides with natural, biodegradable extracts derived entirely from vegetable sources such as tree bark.

• Twist and roll the strap to soften the leather. It does not take long to break in.
• Press the leather slot over the button stud. Hold the stud and pull the leather strap to bring the stud into the hole.

Our Leather!

Our first bag – The Waxed Canvas Tote – which we finished with reclaimed military leather slings found at a flea market. Dusty and dull with years of neglect, the leather was unassuming. But with some hot soapy water, perseverance, and beeswax balm, we removed the layers to find stories told through the markings of days past. We were delighted! The usefulness of the leather sent us on a mission to scour flea markets and military shows for as many old slings as we could find. For years we used these relics to finish our bags – until there were no more to be found.

And so, a new mission was soon underway: the search for the right new leather. We began in the UK driving along long and winding roads through the English countryside to visit J&FJ Baker, a 500-year-old tannery. This experience and many subsequent conversations enriched our understanding of a leather world we had known nothing about.

While shipping leather from the UK turned out to be impractical, we left enlightened with the knowledge that there do exist a few companies who produce leather in a sustainable and responsible way. When we returned to America we found Wickett & Craig – only a stone’s throw from our shop in Philadelphia. Their vegetable tanning process is a slow, natural, and eco-friendly process of tanning raw hides with natural, biodegradable extracts derived entirely from vegetable sources such as tree bark. This durable leather breaks in and gathers a gorgeous patina, bearing the marks of the users’ (and makers’) adventures – the very thing we’ve always celebrated! We’ve been using this leather for three years now and love it!

With the transition from using reclaimed WWII era gun straps for our leather handles to using locally-sourced vegetable-tanned leather, we are reaffirming the fellowship between ourselves and the materials with which we make. By creating beautiful and useful objects out of sustainable and responsibly sourced materials, we strive to change the way that we as individuals make, use, repair and reuse everyday objects. As our new bags leave our Philadelphia workshop and arrive at your doorsteps, what adventures will they see in your hands and how will they transform to become truly yours?

Vegetable tanned leather is made with a slow, natural, and sustainable process of tanning raw hides with natural, biodegradable extracts derived entirely from vegetable sources such as tree bark.	The more you use your bags and journals, the softer the leather will become.

This durable leather breaks in and gathers a gorgeous patina, bearing the marks of the users’ (and makers’) adventures! Here, you can see the leather on Walter's Tote and Scout.	As you use your bag the leather will naturally soften and become much easier to maneuver.

We took out Hunter's out on an Amethyst dig! they got pretty dirty, so we turned the bags inside out, tapped out the dirt and wiped the inside with a sponge and put them in the sun to dry.	Our Finch is my favourite bag - I carry mine nearly everyday. It holds my books, journal, water bottle, and other bits comfortably.

We receive a lot of questions about the things we make - one of the most common is what art supplies can be used in our Journals and Sketchbooks! We decided to make a little video to respond to this question and share some of my favorite supplies.

In this video, I am using our Orra Portrait Sketchbook (which fits nicely into our Sendak!). ⁠We use Strathmore Drawing Paper in all of our journals and sketchbooks, which we find to be very versatile.⁠

Here are some of my favourite drawing and painting supplies to make marks with... ⁠

1. Koh-I-Noor Pencils⁠
2. Pentel Mechanical Pencil⁠
3. Sennelier Oil Pastels⁠
4. Sennelier Water Soluble Pastels⁠
5. Prismacolor Coloured Pencils
6. Handmade Watercolors 
7. Caran d'Ache Neocolour⁠
8. Vintage Dip Pen⁠ (on www.etsy.com)
9. Vintage Rapidograph Pen⁠ (on www.etsy.com)
10. Noodler's Ink
11. Princeton Artist Brush Co.

⁠

Our Orra Sketchbooks!

Our Orra Sketchbooks are thin handbound books that are ideal companions for small projects and daily excursions. They are named for Orra White Hitchcock, a 19th century botanical, geologic, and zoological artist, an illustrator to whom no detail was too small to be recorded in her art. These versatile sketchbooks are made from high quality Strathmore drawing paper, Legion cover stock, and handstitched with linen.

Sampling some of my favourite Art Supplies in our Orra Portrait Notebook.	My Tilda Painter’s Palette made from leather and wood, filled with handmade watercolours from pigments I found!

Sketching in my Landscape Orra Notebook!

Our Orras come in three colours — grey, white, and black — and are stitched with green thread!	The Portrait Orra fits into the back pockets of the Classic Sendak.

Our Orra Notebooks come in 3 sizes — Landscape, Portrait, and Large Portrait.	Our Orra Landscape Notebook fits in the Mini and Classic Sendaks (as do our paint palettes)!

I am getting many inquiries about my Iris Painter’s Palette and the paints that are in it. I shall get to that, but first I have a little story to tell.

I remember getting my first list of vocabulary words in elementary school. That week the words seemed to show up everywhere: in conversation, in books I read, wherever I went. I walked into the classroom, gobsmacked, and shared the news with my teacher. Each week brought new lists and new coincidences. Decades later, my life is still filled with this magic. The synchronous deluge doesn’t just happen with words – it happens with so many things, including our falling into the world of geology and paint. 

One cold winter, Peg and Awl was set up at the Chelsea Holiday Market in New York City for a week. After so long in our makeshift shop, I was set free to stretch my legs in the cold, wet, snowy streets of Manhattan. I typed ‘art store’ into Maps and found Kremer Pigments. When I opened the door, it felt like I had traveled back in time. As I stared at the bags of pigments, the connection between them and the paints I so loved hit me like a thunderbolt. I muttered some incomprehensible thing to the shelves and shelves of coloured dust. The pigments that made the paint came from the earth under my feet: malachite, azurite, epidote, garnet. I had fallen into a world of pure magic!

Fast forward to so-called ‘adulthood,’ and like the vocabulary words that were everywhere, the Family Kent were suddenly, literally, swimming in natural history relics that could be transformed into paint! In a river in Vermont, we found rocks embedded with garnet. In Pennsylvania we met a retired science teacher who bought a cabin precisely because of its location atop ochre mines (he gave us red and yellow ochre in a variety of forms). We sifted through the sand at Calvert Cliffs (whilst swimming in the Chesapeake Bay) and found shark teeth, biominerals, and ancient coral. Gobsmacked, over and over again. 

At Peg and Awl, we have bags of treasures to crush and mix and play. 

I feel our jumping into this world is not complete without that story, because understanding where these colours come from was what brought this epic journey into the realm of magic.

There are invisible things all over, and it’s not until we’re able to focus (through direction or discovery) on what has been heretofore concealed, can we see the words and the materials we use every day.

So now, the colours in my palette:

• Magnetite 
• Noir Mineral*
• Azurite
• Celadonite
• Malachite
• Epidote
• Iron Oxide Red
• Burnt Iron Oxide
• Ombre Nature*
• Cote de Azur Violet
• Ocre Havane*
• Ocre Jaune*

*these are from France, from 40+ years ago, via Belgium. This entire paint adventure includes in insane number of rabbit holes, just look at this: Ochre Quarry in France, via Atlas Obscura.

If you are up for the challenge of making your own paints, you need some tools to begin. If you wish to circumnavigate the making, I will provide a list below with some glorious paint makers! Like most “that looks easy enough!” processes it is rather complex and expensive to begin. But if you are up for the challenge, it is oh so fun! 

 

Tools

I started with the following tools: 

1. a muller
2. palette knives
3. tempered glass palette
4. mortar and pestle (I have loads from flea markets)
5. dropper
6. kremer’s premade medium
7. palette (our Iris!)
8. pigments
9. glass jars (I bought some from Kremer and also use saved spice jars!)

Paintmakers

• Kremer, obviously, in NYC and Germany.
• Case for Making – CFM paints are creamy and delicious and their website is full of beautiful accessories from other makers whose goods they stock. Alexis and crew also introduce the world to artists and workshops and just so. much. magic.
• Greenleaf & Blueberry – G+B paints are unbelievably prepared. If you try to make paints, you will see the challenge in putting paint into a palette neatly, and without cracks. These guys are the masters at this! Their paint, too, is glorious. And Jess’s newsletters are of the few that I read from beginning to end. 
• Beam Paints – Anong is the daughter of paint makers and artists in Canada. Her stories, process and ingenuity are ever-so inspiring. Anong makes countless sustainable palettes and presentations for her paints. She shared with me the ancient Egyptian Paint Palette that inspired our Iris!
• Early Futures (pigment shop) – I found Heidi via instagram and following her journeys is another epic adventure, and her pigments and the stories that accompany them are a complete treasure to transform!

Other Resources

• The Kremer Pigmente Recipe Book – beautifully photographed and so informative!
• Illustoria Magazine – I love this magazine and this month is the Color Issue!