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The biggest change, the couple said, was that they will be free to concentrate on annual Medieval summer festivals and on more creative leatherworking.
“We consider ourselves artists. We were ending up being managers,” watching over the day-today operation of the King Street Store, said Mrs. Watson. By moving into Bruce Vierling’s warehouse in Flint Hill, they are saying goodbye to the pressures of retail sales.
Now custom work and preparation for the fairs in summer and fall keep them busy. And, Mrs. Watson says simply, ‘We want to live in Rappahannock County.”
Mr. Watson, like his wife a native of suburban Northern Virginia, began his interest in leatherwork as a Boy Scout, earning the leatherworking merit badge.
He enrolled in saddlemaking school, then worked as a journeyman saddler in Loudoun and as a tackmaker in Annapolis.
Mrs. Watson went to bootmaking school, but now creates a variety of leather designs.
As their business has grown, especially by word-of-mouth, so too have their orders increased. Some of the custom jobs they’re working on now include a set of eight leather chairs, presidential appointment cases for the State Department, and white buffalo-hide boots.
The business is currently taking orders now for goods to be delivered in November, said Mr. Watson.
The festivals, including the Maryland Renaissance Festival near Annapolis and the Sterling (N.Y.) Renaissance Festival, comprise a substantial portion of their business. The eight-week festivals draw, huge crowds that love the Watsons’s extensive line of custom Medieval garb, including vests, tunics, skirts, scabbards, and belt pouches.
They turn out a good number of
92.9%