Today we’d like to introduce you to Paloma Sherman.
Hi Paloma, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My life has been a series of do it yourself moments. I have never steered away from the present need when it comes to working with my hands. From plumbing and construction work, to sewing, sculpture and woodwork, I have run the gamut as far as the breadth and depth of explorations along the way, always inspired by some current unmet need or room for improvement in my environment.
I started working with leather in high school, co-opting deer skin from my father’s yearly deer hunts and getting it processed because I hated the fact that any part of an animal that was killed would be wasted. I even tried brain tanning the skin myself at one point, obtaining deer brain from the deer processing spot on South Congress (the one staple that still screams Texas in the middle of all the change in Austin). Working for days, my friend and I ended up with something that was about the consistency of rawhide. This was not ideal for my purposes but I learned something all the same; the process, effort and energy are what create meaning in objects to me and without this…what’s the point?
This desire to create, to innovate, led me to Parsons School of Design in New York to obtain a Dual Master’s Degree in Lighting and Interior Design. There, I fell into the world of architectural lighting design. I worked for about a year and a half in New York, then moved back to Austin in pursuit of love and family. I carried my New York career with me, working remotely from Austin for many years when the pandemic hit, three months after having my first child. It was a very real struggle to meet the needs of an architectural design schedule without a safe childcare option so I parted ways with my firm.
I began re-assessing my needs for work/life balance and what it would take to get there with a child underfoot for an unknown length of time. I had also been missing working with my hands since the bulk of my design work for the past 6 years was on the computer. So I decided to do a deep-dive into Encuera, a business that I had put on the backburner.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I have been very lucky to have some family support. However, my family made the choice to keep our child out of daycare due to the pandemic and it has not been easy juggling two jobs at once. There are a lot of late nights and photography sessions with a kiddo in tow because that’s when Encuera work gets done. However, on the whole I am grateful for the opportunity to do something with my hands that honors the choice we made to protect the little one who’s light shines so bright.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I started Encuera because I love leather as a medium for it’s time-honored aging, durability and organic qualities. Drawing from my minimalist Parson’s design training, we keep the pieces simple and functional and incorporate hand stitched details and connections in each piece as a feature.
Encuera as a brand name has a lot of meaning and goes back to latin roots. In Spanish it is actually two words, “en cuera” meaning “of hide”. However, it has a bit of a dual meaning, as the colloquialism for “en cuera” also means “to undress”.
We use the colloquial meaning as a framework for our brand, undressing or stripping the designs to the minimum. This supports sustainability of design and reminds us of our goal to do more with less. For example, we do limited releases and on demand pieces rather than mass-production to limit waste and to honor the animal through each piece that is created. We also prioritize the environmental impacts of our materials, using veg-tan leather to limit chemical impact on the environment, sourced from manufacturers within the United States to limit carbon footprint. We also avoid adhesives that emit VOCs into the environment as much as possible and maintain consciousness about each part that is added to the bag, where it comes from and how it was made, purchasing locally as much as possible and really taking the time to decide whether it is even necessary to the piece we are working on. Sometimes this means a little extra work for us in the manufacturing process but it’s worth the effort in the long run.
One final thing that sets us apart, we are growing a blended (my working term for Latina/Jewish) women owned business in the male-dominated field of leatherwork.
As we push through this women’s recession and attack on women’s rights in Texas, my hope is that we begin to see an upward moving trend in women owned businesses as we move back into the workforce.
Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
We are always looking to showcase our pieces in the right places and would love to have anyone who is interested reach out if it is the right fit! We also have an Instagram page and would love a follow. We’ll be doing some giveaways and showing some new pieces during January around the official launch of our website as well as providing fun information about our product and what we stand for at @encuera.ig along the way.
Additionally, our hope is to grow Encuera to a point where other hands are needed and we can collaborate with other local makers and designers in our production work, so reach out if you are interested in that so we can keep your info. on hand!
Contact Info:
- Email: info.encuera@gmail.com
- Instagram: @encuera.ig
Image Credits
Justin Cody Huie
