Ten Cards and a Piece of Alligator
The smallest thing I made from the animal: a business card holder cut from a single piece of Louisiana alligator
The skin on this holder is smaller than your palm, and it took the same hide I use for a briefcase. That’s the part I keep returning to. A card holder asks for very little leather and a great deal of decision. Where on the belly do you cut? Which stretch of scale goes on the face? How thick can the whole thing be before it stops being something you slip into a pocket?
Video: “Real Louisiana Alligator Leather Business Card Holder,” Marcellino NY Briefcase Maker on YouTube.
I filmed that in September 2017. In it I say I made only a handful, five or six, and that each holds about ten cards. They came with a small pouch. They’re the kind of object I made once, in a short run, and then set aside for bigger work.
The handoff
A business card holder is built around a gesture that lasts about two seconds. A hand reaches into a jacket, produces a small rectangle, and offers it. Everything else I do on a card holder serves those two seconds.
In the video I hold one up and go through the motion, saying something like “here’s my card, here you go.” The holder tips toward you, you pinch a card through the oval opening in the face, and it slides out. The opening isn’t decoration. It’s the door. And the way an alligator skin frames that oval, with the scales running around it like a ripple around a stone, makes the door look like it was always there.
I like objects that are all gesture. A fountain pen, a cigarette case, a pocket watch. Each exists to make one small motion worth watching.
One piece
In the video I stress that each holder is one piece of leather, folded and stitched. The skin comes from either the underside of the belly or the area over the arm, and I describe it as supple, and it is.
The edges are polished, the stitching is by hand, and the inside is lined with suede. In the photographs you can see the lining through the oval: a bright blue that has no business being inside something so black. The black outside stays sober. The blue is a private color, and it only shows when you reach in.
Six in a circle
There’s a photo in the set of six holders laid out in a ring, each one pointing a slightly different way, like petals. I count six, which matches what I say in the video about the size of the run: five or six.
Looking at that photo, I think of it as a small installation. Same skin, same cut, six individual variations in how the scales landed. No two faces match because no two bits of belly matched. A mass-produced card holder would put the same pattern in the same place every time. I couldn’t if I wanted to, and I didn’t want to.
The cardboard argument
This is the one place in the video where I make a technical decision out loud. I put a piece of cardboard inside the holder as a stiffener, so it keeps its shape. I contrast it with an earlier style I’d made without the cardboard, which was softer and tended to curl.
I think the stiffened one is better, and I say so. It holds its edges, the cards stay put, and the holder doesn’t warp in a pocket. But I also say there’s something to be said for the soft version, which is slightly thinner. That’s one of those honest trade-offs a maker lives with: sturdy against slim. You can’t have both at the same time.
I’ve said elsewhere in my work that I avoid cardboard in the large bags, because it crinkles over years. A card holder is a different animal. It’s small, it’s sealed, and it’s short-lived in a way a briefcase isn’t. The rule changes with the scale.
Why alligator for something so small
A fair question. A card holder doesn’t need alligator. Calf would do the job for a fraction of the cost and I’d sell more of them.
But a small object is where a material is easiest to see. On a briefcase, the alligator is a landscape and you step back to take it in. On a card holder it’s a single close-up. The scales are right there, an inch from your thumb. You can feel the ridges when you pull a card out. A material that large in a hand that small is an intimate thing, and I wanted to make something that put the skin in the hand rather than on the arm.
If you want the longer story about why I work with wild alligator, the site has a piece on the hide itself, What Wild Alligator Leather Actually Is. For a much bigger piece from the same animal, there’s a briefcase built from three hides.
The pouch and the pocket
Each holder shipped in a small pouch, which I mention almost in passing at the start of the video. I mention it because the pouch tells you how I thought about the object. A thing that comes in its own pouch isn’t an accessory. It’s a possession, something you put away at night.
The holder has a cousin inside my briefcases. A card pocket is part of the standard set of inside pockets, and the pocket does the same job as the holder in a plainer way. It holds a few cards in leather and keeps them from bending. The alligator holder is that idea taken out of the bag and given a skin worth looking at.
That’s a useful way to think about a small object. It’s often a large object’s function, carried alone. A card pocket lives inside a briefcase and nobody sees it. A card holder lives in a pocket and everybody sees it, once, for two seconds.
What a card is
A business card is a strange survivor. It’s a piece of paper with a name on it, and it exists to be handed over and forgotten. I think that’s why the holder matters more than the card. The card is disposable by design. The holder is the part that stays with you.
Opinion, naturally. I’m a leatherworker and I’d say that. But I’d say this too: when you hand over a card from a holder with a skin like this one, the person receiving it has a second thing to look at, and sometimes that second thing is what they remember.
The price of a small thing
The card holder was listed in the shop at $50 when I photographed it. I’ll let that number sit there. It’s a small object, and the price looks small next to a briefcase. But the leather in it is the same leather, from the same animal, and the work is hand stitching around a space the size of a deck of cards. Small isn’t cheap to make. It’s only cheap to buy.
Where it is now
The holder isn’t listed anymore, and I don’t have any in stock that I’m aware of. This is work from 2017, a short run, and it’s earned its place on this page as a finished piece. If you’re after a small alligator piece, write to me through the Bespoke page and we can talk about what’s possible.
You Might Also Like
- A Burgundy Alligator Portfolio, Read Like a Map
- What Wild Alligator Leather Actually Is, and Why It Changes How You Work
- Three Alligator Hides, One Briefcase
