Chester Plum // Bespoke Leatherworker

Greetings and Salutations! My name is Chester or Chess for short, but I like when people use both!  For those who care, I'm a Pisces/Sagittarius/Pisces.

A couple months into the Great Quarantine of 2020, I suddenly had the desire to learn about leather craft (Honestly don't even remember what sparked the thought) and spent all morning from dawn to dusk watching cowboys on YouTube explaining the craft to me. I took many notes, and spent almost two weeks putting together a list of supplies before finally settling on a website to purchase them from. One week later when the package arrived, Checkmate Leather was born. I started having an interest in the arts around 6th grade, my main interest of course Anime. I quickly outgrew that, and moved on to fashion design. My dreams were crushed there in the computer lab of my middle school upon receiving an email from my dream fashion school at the time when they told me how much tuition was per session. After that, I spent the following years frustrated with myself for never having motivation or inspiration for art. I was always incredibly insecure. I discovered Etsy around 2014 in high school and thought it was the coolest thing, and I remember being sad I'd never be able to do something like that....and I was very wrong. I made about 10 sales in the first month I started making and selling. relying on Instagram and Facebook to find clients and make sales. I worked on leather for the next 6 months with gusto, until I was forced to take a break by having top surgery in December of 2020. After recovering from surgery, my life flipped upside down in new ways every month it seemed, and I went 6 months not creating anything. Once the rain clouds started to clear, I decided I wanted to take this seriously, so I opened my Etsy shop, changed up my photo game, and start learning how to network. I am so unbelievably proud of myself, sometimes I just visit my own shop because the little me in my head cant believe that I made these things, and that people actually like them?! But the most important thing I've learned through discovering my artistic identity; I don't give a damn if people didn't like them, I love the process of leather and do it for enjoyment as much as I do because I wanna make it in this world. So thank you all for supporting my passion, I truly wouldn't be able to create the things I do without people to help support me and my business along the way.

Now I've got my own website?! It's presently under construction and I'm sure it will be for a moment, thanks for sticking around to watch me grow<3

-Chester/Chess

They/Them