MADE OBJECTS · APPLYING · SURFACING · COMPLETED
Leather Goods
Kozicki Sports
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Made objects
Questions it asks
Applying: a hand-made object brings the idea into daily, in-the-hand use.
Surfacing: the hand learned the material’s codes before theory could name them.
Stage
Completed
Years
2012–2019
Place
Marietta, Georgia (USA)
Role
Founder & product designer
The encounter
Where the hand knew first
This practice came before any theoretical language for it. From 2012 to 2019 I ran Kozicki Sports as founder and product designer, hand-crafting more than twenty-five customisable leather products in Marietta, Georgia, each one managed from first concept through production to the moment it reached the customer. The work began where early life already was, in baseball, with fielding gloves, and widened from there into household goods. None of it was theorised at the time. It was the plain practice of getting a material to do what was intended, and learning, slowly, what the material intended back.
What was made
A catalogue, built to order
A catalogue of hand-made leather objects, each one customisable and built to order. The range ran from baseball fielding gloves (the origin of the practice, and the most demanding to get right, since a glove has to break in toward one particular hand) through a wide field of everyday and household goods: six-pack bottle carriers, growler slings, drink koozies, coasters, pint sleeves, coffee sleeves, wallets, a passport holder, a laptop sleeve, desk mats, keychain lanyards, hunting accessories, and an assortment of straps and handles. Every product was offered two ways: a customisable version designed to a particular person’s specification, and a stock variant of the same design. Each one was a full lifecycle in miniature: the design ideation, the selection and cutting of the hide, the stitching and forming, the finishing, and the delivery to a specific person who would then break it in and make it their own. The custom fielding gloves carried bold lacing and the Kozicki Sports stamp; the household pieces favoured natural and dark-brown leathers finished to wear in over years of use.
What it shows
The first de-sign deliverable
This is the oldest practice in the portfolio, and in a real sense the foundation of all the others. The doctoral thesis names it directly: the leatherworking years were one of the incubators in which the work of design was learned, long before there were words for it. A fielding glove is a de-sign deliverable in the most literal form the word allows. It is a tangible object, but the quality it is actually made toward, the way it will feel, break in, and fit a hand it has not yet met, cannot be specified in advance; it can only be navigated toward through the making. Everything later written about navigating toward qualities was first learned here, with a needle and a piece of hide. The leather goods are where the hand knew before the theory did.
Kozicki Sports · founder & product designer · Marietta, Georgia · 2012–2019
More than twenty-five customisable hand-crafted leather products
Kozicki Sports · Marietta, Georgia