| CUSTOM BUCO J24 Horsehide Leather Motorcycle Jacket (shown w/ Optional Crown Zipper) |
LOST WORLDS INC. |
| Classic Motorcycle Americana |
| Custom Buco J24
Horsehide Leather Motorcycle Jacket 1950s |
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One definition of folk art might be
a marriage of craft and personality. Folk art communicates the
individual, the idiosyncratic, the homespun. Often classic motorcycle jackets were
lavishly and imaginatively adorned with a wide assortment of studs,
rhinestones, geometric shapes, domes, etc. The Joseph Buegeleisen
Company sold decorative
hardware under the Buco brand name as part of its extensive motorcycle
accessory line to retailers. Collectors revere surviving
original Golden Age motorcycle jackets that have been so personalized. The
second Tanaka book has fantastic examples. Authentic individual-customized
ones are
always rare but factory-rendered Custom order extravaganzas, as the Buco seems to
have been in1953-56, rarer. Several elaborate, stunning examples
of jeweled, studded Buco J24 Horsehide Motorcycle Jackets exist. One in
the first Tanaka book, another in our memory -- we had one over twenty years
ago but condition was so poor we let it go. That one had a plaid cotton
lining as well as, ugh, replaced YKK zipper.
As both technical and artistic challenge, LOST WORLDS wanted to do this J23 variant for years, but it took time to source and manufacture the correct hardware. For example, originals use plastic rhinestones, ours genuine Swarovski! All fittings on originals were stampings. We use die cast parts (except for one component). Despite the qualitative refinement the look and aura of original Custom J24 fittings is fully preserved. Enhanced. Just look at them! The result a different kind of marriage: peerless, awesome LOST WORLDS hand workmanship and materials wedded faithfully to the classic Buco J24 design. Taken to a certain extreme, a beautiful, artistic one, our extreme. There's wonderful balance in the way Buco (we think it was Buco) customized. Detailed but not gaudy. Understatedly overstated. The stones 'n' studs are symmetrical accents, nothing too much. Our version ups the ante significantly. It takes a full work day for our craftsman to measure, eyeball and install the fittings. Some are installed during the jacket production, others after. What emerges is a kind of folk art. Artisanship with a fantastic, heady whiff of self-invention, the 1950s man of the road as himself mechanical component, man and machine united. There's whimsy too, but not camp or kitsch. And sometimes more is less. Like here. We're used to hearing the opposite. You judge a jacket, for example, by its presence and lack of silliness. A jacket has to speak and the customer have ears. Most jackets we see these days work by an awful ventriloquism -- someone telling you, for his own reasons, what's good, what's authentic, etc., about some jacket but the jacket's mute, limply, flimsily propped up there, like something beached. Sadly, most people seem ill-equipped to appreciate true Americana like the Buco, forget the price. One needs an eye for what's real. Most people couldn't know real if you put it on their placemats. Of course what's real about something like the Custom Buco J24 is that it's so mythic. Myth and dream, whereby this jacket achieves iconic status. All specifications identical to our J23. Meaning, of course, that this work of art is meant to be a mobile! Used, abused, exercised in any weather you like. Famed LOST WORLDS heavyweight horsehide protects you like a raincoat -- water beads right off. Road performance extraordinary. Made at our NYC factory by a single peerless craftsman. |
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©2008 LOST WORLDS INC. All Rights Reserved. |
