ABOUT

 

Hello and a very warm welcome! 

My name is Nicola Natland and I make leather goods by hand in my studio in Newport Beach, California. I am originally from the UK but moved to California over 20 years ago when I married my American husband. 

Making jewelry was my creative outlet for over ten years until one day in 2014 when I made a leather bag for my daughter which literally changed my creative life overnight. I had some previous experience working with leather as I had taken a shoe making workshop in 2011, but I had never stitched leather by hand before.

Initially, the learning curve was steep and my hands ached but I found the process so satisfying. There has been a lot of trial and error as I developed and tested all my own patterns and I have been honing my craft over the last several years using some traditional and some very non-traditional and innovative techniques. Fast forward 5 years and I now run my own leather goods company, Dove Grey, and I am more passionate than ever about creative beautiful, well-made leather goods by hand.

More recently I have been adding a lot more color, pattern and texture to my work through painting and stamping and I am loving the new direction in which Dove Grey is evolving.

 

Creating beautiful handmade leather goods with purpose. 

Dove Grey products are made with the highest quality vegetable tanned leather and solid brass hardware, all sourced within the USA. With proper care, Dove Grey leather goods are certain to be cherished for generations.

We aim to make conscious decisions rooted in a love for our planet. 

It is our intent to reduce the amount of waste produced by our increasingly fast-paced lives. In order to keep our eco-impact low, a majority of Dove Grey leather goods are made to order. Our “no scraps left behind” policy also ensures the minimal waste of leather hide as pieces simply get smaller until they are all used up!