I acquired a set of old leather saddle bags off a motorcycle in San Francisco, California. They were sold only as "vintage leather motorcycle saddle bags with nice patina."
But the 5 cent coins set into the leather strapping, two on each side, told me who was the maker. So did the unusually heavy leather and the zippers for detaching the bags.
These aren't just old leather saddle bags: these have interesting motorcycle history!
It turns out, these bags were made by Phil Thacher, a Stockton, California legendary leather
craftsman and a father of four, who died at age 44 in February 1999, two months after being
diagnosed with leukemia.
He was a "hippie" leather craftsman
from Santa Barbara. His love of leather crafts led him to open The
Leatherworks shop in Stockton in 1976, assisted by his wife Aimee.
He initially provided custom
handmade sandals, belts, wallets, purses, and other small leather items.
Then, one day in the late 1970’s, perhaps 1979, a
customer asked Philip to make a set of leather saddlebags for a motorcycle.
From this start, Philip soon developed standard motorcycle saddle bag product lines on specific
styles beginning just a few years later in 1982. Aimee now runs The Leatherworks company, still in Stockton, and it has become a very large supplier of various motorcycle bags.
I contacted his widow Aimee and sent her images of this bag. She was amazed to see this survivor from 35 years ago, and she dated these saddle bags to the very first run of their first standard style bag, around 1982. So 35 years ago.
Philip Thacher was easygoing, pleasant, likable, friends say. He
had a knack for drawing people together from all walks: Hell's Angels, yuppie bikers, fellow merchants on the Miracle Mile.
Larry Loesch, a Harley motorcycle rider, walked into the
store around 1989. He said “if you went over there on a Saturday, you'd see 20 people
there just to visit, to have him sew a patch on their jacket, to shoot the bull with him."
Heavy leather was his works’
special feature and he invented the zipper-detachable bags right from the
start. He used very heavy YKK zippers and the pull taps could be padlocked to a grommet in the leather as can be seen in the image of my bags below.
Once unzipped, the bag could be carried by its heavy leather handle like a briefcase.
His inclusion of 5 cent coins, buffalo nickels, in the strapping was a distinguishing
feature and allowed him to jokingly say he “only sells “nickel bags.”
The bags I have do not have the characteristic Thacher-installed buffalo nickels. Instead, they have Liberty five cent coins (note - not very valuable). One side displays two "heads" and the other side displays two "tails."
Phil Thacher's widow could not remember him using Liberty coins but suspected this was just a custom request from the buyer.
Someone who spent many years at the time in San Fransisco told me on hearing of these bag's discovery:
"That
is a great connection! Many of my friends in the Germanic Renaissance
guild were expert leather workers and bikers. Not of the yuppie type but
of the "roadhouse" type. On such character was "Red" who used to brag
about his bags from Stockton...
They must have been from the same place... He had custom tooled the
leather and had the Ace of Spades and skulls all over them... He had
mentioned that they were the only ones to have because of the thickness
of the leather, which made them indestructible.
Aimee remembered Phil made someone bags with the Ace of Spades in them, but not the skulls.
RESTORATION
The condition of these leather survivors of over 35 years tells of 35 years of use in riding wind and 35 years of exposure to the California sun.
Thacher's bags were all black. These bags only displayed added black shoe polish or possibly even black paint, with a heavy accumulation of road dust; and many areas were worn to uncolored leather. That's the seller's idea of great "patina." Maybe so, but here Phil's very thick leather was very stiff - like cardboard and needed attention.
Before the stiff leather could be treated, this leather necessarily needed "cleaning." What was on these bags was history for sure, but not a nice "patina." Also, they were destined for a new life on a new motorcycle and possible decades of future survival, not for a museum display.
Details later ...
