La Huella
Rooted in Heritage
About Me
Crafting Stories Through Leather
My identity is shaped by movement between cultures. Being half Argentinian and half German, I grew up carrying two ways of understanding tradition, time, and work. Leaving Argentina to study shoemaking meant stepping away from familiar rituals in order to preserve something deeper: a respect for craftsmanship and pursuing my dreams.
Immersing myself in shoemaking transformed my life entirely. Through discipline, patience, and material knowledge, I found a language that connects my heritage to my future. Leather became my medium for reconciling distance and belonging — a way to carry Argentina with me while learning from European craft traditions and quality.
La Huella is the mark of that journey: what changes when we move, and what remains when we choose to keep tending to it.
This contest is my platform to showcase how heritage and contemporary design can unite, creating pieces that resonate with authenticity and timeless elegance.
"La Huella" - Concept
La Huella explores the way time shapes both material and memory. Vegetable-tanned leather darkens with light, touch, and use, quietly gathering depth until it becomes something transformed, yet still itself.
This quality made me reflect on cultural memory and think about how customs change as we do. As we move through our lives, do our traditions travel with us, or do they fade if we stop tending to them?
Argentina’s identity is carried in its rituals: the sharing of mate, the grip of a pato ball, the rhythm of tango, the spirit of the gaucho. These symbols are not fixed in time; they evolve, marked by each generation that keeps them alive.
Through sun-imprinted shoes, a hand-stitched pato ball, and a pumpkin mate with a veg-tan leather–shaped handle braided with rawhide, I explore the material as a living archive that absorbs light and lineage, asking what we choose to keep alive.
Creative Journey
My Creative Search
Heritage
Vegetable-tanned leather becomes an archive of time, just as heritage becomes an archive of lived tradition. It is not preserved untouched; like leather, it transforms with time and the hands that carry it.
Nostalgia
Being far from home made tradition louder; distance sharpened my need to hold onto the rituals that shaped me. Time and movement do not erase heritage — they transform it, asking to be carried, practiced, and renewed.
Contemporary Fusion
Rooted in tradition yet shaped by the present, the pieces translate cultural memory through a contemporary craft language that becomes a bridge where inherited traditions are reinterpreted through time, material and personal journey.
Images: Artist Molina Campos
Inspiration
Moodboard: Visualizing the Argentine Spirit
“Aquí me pongo a cantar al compás de la vigüela, que al hombre que lo desvela una pena extraordinaria, como el ave solitaria
con el cantar se consuela.” - Martin Fierro
“Here I set myself to sing to the rhythm of the guitar, for the man kept awake by an extraordinary sorrow, like a solitary bird, finds comfort in his song.”
Gaucho and Martin Fierro
The gaucho’s voice endures through Martín Fierro, where land, labor, and identity are sung into memory.
Soguería Criolla
Where patience becomes form, as rawhide is braided into rhythm, tradition, and use.
National Sport
"Pato" carries the tension of strength and skill, a game where leather, horse, and hand move as one.
Behind the Scenes
Process Highlights
Final Showcase
Process
Sun Imprinted designs
I used the sun to imprint gaucho motifs onto vegetable-tanned leather, allowing light to mark the surface through a process similar to cyanotype printing.
Raw-Hide Braiding
Rawhide braiding, a traditional Argentine craft, was chosen for key elements such as the pato ball to honor ancestral handwork.
Leather Molding
Vegetable-tanned leather molding was used to shape the material, emphasizing its responsiveness to time, pressure, and touch.
Final Showcase
The Final Collection
Each piece marks the end of an intensive process of learning and making, shaped by patience, passion, tradition and personal transformation within the material.
Shoes
Shoes made from vegetable-tanned leather, where gaucho motifs and traditional patterns rooted in the visual language of Indigenous people of Argentina are imprinted by the sun, allowing time and light to leave a permanent trace on the material.
Pato - Ball
A hand-stitched pato ball in vegetable-tanned leather, finished with rawhide braiding, translating a national sport into an object of craft and memory.
Mate
A pumpkin mate reimagined with a molded vegetable-tanned leather handle, braided with rawhide, merging ritual, material, and contemporary design. The leather has been treated with ink potraying the breeze of the Argentine Pampa.
Let's Connect
Thank you for your time!
Nathalie Spielmann
Continue the Journey Together
Whether you're interested in collaboration, learning more about Argentine leather craftsmanship, or following future projects, let's stay connected.
Phone
+39 331 480 5171
Social Media
IG @natispielmann // @maisonmausi
Tik Tok @mausisp
Portfolio and additional work available upon request