My name is Callan Burton-Shore. I am an earth-skills teacher and traditional craftsperson living on Cherokee land, outside of Asheville, North Carolina.
I believe deeply in living with the land and making things with my hands.
I teach friction fire, hide tanning, spoon carving, and other skills throughout the Southeast and beyond.
When I’m not teaching or creating, I’m usually swimming in a river, cooking meat over a fire, or climbing a tree!
In addition to teaching my own classes, I also teach through The Green WoodWrights Festival, Wild Abundance, The Firefly Gathering, The Earthskills Rendezvous Gathering, Forest Floor Wilderness Programs, The Living Earth School, Olive’s Porch (an extension of John C. Campbell Folk School.) and beyond.
About Me
Hide Craft
For hundreds of years our ancestors tanned hides using natural methods that caused little harm to them or the earth. Sadly, today the majority of the leather industry uses chromium and other dangerous chemicals to turn animal skins into useable material.
I use both the vegetable (bark-tanning) and smoke-tanning (brain-tanning) methods to make buckskin, leather, and furs. When veg tanning, I harvest tannic bark and leaves from the trees and plants in my ecosystem. I then make a strong, astringent ‘tea’ that the hide steeps in until it is tanned through. When smoke-tanning, I use eggs (or an alternative emulsified oil) to dress and soften the hide, and then smoke the hide to preserve it.
Offerings
Workshops
We offer several types of workshops and every year they vary. Typically we offer at least one buckskin class, one sheepskin class, and one spoon carving class. Occasionally we offer other classes, like fish skin tanning, bunny hide tanning, and friction fire (bowdrill).
Check out our Workshop page or sign up for the newsletter to hear about upcoming classes.
If you would like to host a workshop or do a one on one class, please reach out via email.
Custom Tanning Services
Hunted a deer whose hide you want to save? Want to preserve the hides from your sheep flock? Found a cool roadkill animal?
We’ll work with you to choose the natural tanning method that best suits your hide (and what you want to make with it)!