He started out as a baker and spent many years tending starter, mixing it with flour, water, salt, and letting the fermentation process work its magic. He is known for making amazing long-fermented sourdough breads that, when slathered with good butter, make for the most comforting bites of food you can imagine.

But the problem with bread is that people eat it. Then, it is gone. The more amazing the bread, the faster it disappears. As much as he loves nourishing people, Doug also wanted to make something that would last.  Not just longer than a meal but through the years.

Because he’s married to a woman who studies sustainable, ethical food systems, Doug had too many opportunities to think about nourishment, lifecycles, the impacts of over-consumption, waste and conservation. He got to thinking about how he could create lasting goods from the same sources as the more ephemeral foods that we eat. This led him to leather. And not just fancy leather -- textural hides with all the markings of a life and a death.

The only problem was that Doug had never worked with leather before. So he wandered into a Tandy shop and picked up a wallet kit. Though he’d never sewn more than a button, his fingers took to this tactile act. Working with the kit was more a matter of assembly than creation, but Doug could tell that once he learned the fundamentals, leatherwork would be an outlet for his creative energies -- the same energies that lead him to earlier careers in both baking and photography.  By the time he was conditioning the leather of his first wallet, Doug -- always self-taught -- was already watching videos by other makers.

Over the past few years, Doug has honed his newest handcraft. (Though he continues to learn every day and owes a debt of gratitude to the generous community of leather workers who share their knowledge and encourage each other online.)  What began as a hobby quickly became a vocation. As his friends started carrying the wallets and bags he designed, their friends wanted to know where they could get something similar.  Doug saw that his pieces -- which only get more beautiful as they wear -- were a way for him to make a lasting contribution.