Back in June of 2002, I began collecting club colors. At first I was fascinated by the designs and colors of each patch. I challenged myself to take photographs of as many club colors as I could find at various leather events that I attended, just to see how many different ones that I was able to run across. The very first patch that I photographed was Trident International Central Florida taken at Southeast Leatherfest in June of 2002. I believe that I also photographed a “Fist” backpatch as well during that same event.
A few months later, I expanded with photographs of Menamore and Trident Knights patch from the vest of Chris Zimmerman. I just kept taking photos, sometimes with permission, other times, taken from afar using my zoom feature of my camera.
Thereafter, I started doing google searches on leather club
colors. I found some pictures but they
were few and far between, so I started
visiting club websites and saving copies of their logos or patches. I broadened
my collection when Viola Johnson presented me with numerous issues of “extra”
Leather Journal Magazines that she had. As I started going through the old
magazines, I realized what a treasure they held, not only in articles and news
about clubs, but many times, there were pictures of clubs and their colors. So
naturally, I started scanning those pictures and saving those. My collection
grew as the years passed and one day I showed my colors file to Viola Johnson,
she was wondering why I wanted to scan each pin on her pin sash. Needless to
say, Mom Vi had a fit and loved what I had done in my searching and collecting.
I told her that I would one day love to see a coffee table book of nothing but
leather club colors.
Not wanting to segregate the leather/fetish communities, I collect colors on all sorts of organizations regardless of sexual identities, regardless of how long they have been in existence. My only wish is that more clubs would at least put founding dates in their information. Even the new clubs of today will one day be the clubs that someone else wants to research.
There came a time when I wanted to share my collection with others in the community. Surely I could not be the only one that was interested in club colors, so I created a yahoo site and uploaded all my images to my original colorsofleather yahoo site. Since yahoo limits space, I was not able to upload any of the bear club pins and patches, so finally, I deleted everything from colorsofleather and started over. I created colorsofleather2 as well as my original colorsofleather and by using both sites, I was able to upload ALL the colors, including the bear clubs.
Real insanity set in when one day I was curious about who all these people were in Tony DeBlase's timeline. So I once again went to the web and began searching. As I found more and more information, pictures, etc, I began to download the pictures into the timeline that I had saved on my computer and it began to take on a life of it's own. I made the mistake of showing what I had done to Viola Johnson and that's when the madness really began. Anyone that knows Viola, knows how she feels about preserving our leather history. She urged me to continue my work (I was burned out on it at the time I showed it to her) so eventually I picked it back up and started adding more and more information and pictures until you see what I currently have collected to date. She refused to allow me to show it to anyone until just recently. Why? Well because she knows the work that went into assembling this collection and she wanted me to have the credit. She knows the words are not mine, nor the photos, but she knows the time and effort are indeed mine.
In late 2006, a printed version of my rendition of Tony's timeline was available for view at Florida Fetish. (There are only 2 printed copies in existence, mine and Viola Johnson has the 2nd copy). That same weekend, the webmaster from the Archives browsed through the printed version of the timeline and asked if I had a version of it in digital format, I replied that I did indeed have digital versions but when I was requested to give it to the archives for their website, I replied that it was already available on the internet at this website. Ironically, just recently (early 2008) the Leather Archives and Museum has started adding photo's to Tony's timeline as well.
This will always be a never-ending project as there will always be information to update as time passes. So check back from time to time to catch up on additions.
if you have any thing to add to this compilation, please email me so that it may be inserted into the proper place. But the main purpose behind this site is to preserve our history and the best way to do that is to pass along your knowledge.
With Much Respect
Gwen
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