Independent designer and woodworker Cameron Oehler says his business’s name is “kind of a nerd joke.”
“My company is called Leitmotif, and it’s spelled ‘1-3-3-7-m-o-t-i-f,’” he explains. “‘Leet” is from video games. It stands for ‘elite’, and ‘1-3-3-7’ kind of looks like ‘l-e-e-t’. It’s something you would say about yourself or someone else, playing video games.”
Quality is Cameron’s game when he creates his coasters, jewelry and cutting boards. His high standards come from his growing-up years, learning his craft. “My father has been a custom cabinetmaker for forty or fifty years,” Cameron says. “So I started doing woodworking as a summer job for him, throughout my childhood.”
From that woodworking background, Cameron branched off to create his original coasters, jewelry and cutting boards “four or five years ago.”
The board he’s displaying here is a fan patten he designed, and is made of walnut and maple. For Christmas 2012, Cameron says he hopes to have created some new art deco-patterned jewelry in ebony and brass.
When we talked at the Renegade Craft Fair in Los Angeles in July, Cameron wasn’t yet sure if he’d be coming to California for the December Renegade shows. After all, he’s from Indiana–and his cutting boards aren’t light to transport! “The drive itself is thirty-five hours, or something like that,” Cameron says. “We did (the trip) over a few days and camped a couple of nights.”
But even if he can’t travel West this Christmas season, Cameron’s work is available in his Etsy store. And he says one of the most important lessons he’s learned, as an artist, is that people appreciate a high-quality product.
“It’s exciting to see people get excited about something that I have made.”