The best way to find out about the modern artisans working in tanning and leatherwork today, is to ask them about their experiences, inspirations and artistic practices. With the advent of the Internet, it is easier than ever to find a window into the creative world of these artisans and to find out more.
These artists and crafters earn a living with their leathercraft. They have taken the leap into self-employment and sustain themselves and their families with their skill and artistry. I asked the artists a series of questions and encouraged them to describe their motivations, inspirations and goals for the future. They have taken traditional techniques and allowed them to evolve as they have explored their own ways of working with this versatile material.
You can find out more about each artist by following the links provided for their websites and social media. You can also buy their products directly, or even commission pieces yourself, and help to support the hand-made leather industry directly at source!
The Artisans
Jez Hunt, along with his brother Mark runs Ancestor Leathercrafts, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Originally from Wales, the brothers create fantastic leather pieces inspired by folklore, myths and legends, history and music. Jez worked as a leather merchant and maker, as well as a storyteller, costumier and creator of special effects and then in 2013 he decided to go it alone as a full-time leatherworker, and Ancestor Leathercrafts was born. From suits of armour to mystical masks; from pouches and bags to scabbards and arm bracers, their work is unique. Ancestor Leather specialises in painstakingly hand-carved and exquisitely painted pieces, often with a Celtic or Viking twist.
What first attracted you to your craft?
I’ve always made things. Both of my parents were great at making things (out of necessity initially) so I realised at an early age that everything was just made by people, so if you could work it out, you could make it too. Leather was always around as a kid, from my aunty working in a belt factory, to the tobacconists my dad went to that also sold belts and wallets.
I’ve worked in many materials over the years, and constantly drawn and painted, but it wasn’t until I really started delving into the craft of leatherwork that I found a way of combining everything. I learn every day, with every project, and that’s incredibly attractive and stimulating. Part of it is the variation in material, from soft lambskins for clothing, through to rawhide edging on shields, and the moulding of veg-tan leather for armour and masks.
Can you describe your journey into your craft?
I was always into history and fantasy and making things as a kid and I got into miniatures and role-playing games. At fourteen I discovered LARPing and that needed costume and armour, and I thought I’d have a go at making something. With my older brother doing most of the work, we made an aluminium helmet with leather inserts and that was the first leather protect I’d done. I carried on LARPing into my twenties, and moved up to Newcastle where there was a local leather merchants where I went to buy bits of leather and buckles for costumes I was making.
I saw a position going at the leather merchants and got the job. Over the next decade I learned a fair bit. Being surrounded by leather, and customers making things, and the other staff there meant I could get answers to questions I had and an endless stream of knowledge. I’d get back from work and make things, try out new ideas and different ways of doing things, honing my skills. It wasn’t formal training, and certainly no qualifications, but a way of learning that suited me way more: a wealth of information, years of experience I could draw on, and lots of practical making in the evenings after work. I left the leather merchants to go self employed about four years ago and I’m still learning every day.
Do you have any inspirations or influences?
I’m inspired and influenced by way too many things – history, mythology and folklore, especially the cultures that have impacted Britain. The artistry, artefacts, landscapes and tales are an endless wellspring of ideas. I love the spirals and whorls of insular Celtic Iron Age art, the shapes of the megalithic cultures patterns, Anglo Saxon and Viking knotwork, Pictish animal carvings; this stuff seeps into your bones, and it finds its way out of my pencil and then onto leather. All the artists and writers I really love are the same; Tolkien, Brian Froud, Alan Lee, Robert Holdstock, John Howe, Alan Garner. A lot of these inspire TV and film, and they are always filled with leatherwork, be it belts and bags or armour.
What do you enjoy most about working with the materials that you choose to work with?
Leather is an incredible material. It’s humanity’s oldest fabric; we have spent all of history developing and refining it. The variation you can achieve is vast, from something incredibly soft and delicate through to something solid enough to bounce weapons off. Leatherwork is a strange mix that encompasses the practical building processes of something like woodwork (I work alongside my brother, who I trained, and his background is as a joiner and it’s got a strange overlap) through to the soft techniques of a seamstress, and the visual demands of being a painter.
Please describe the tools of your craft, and how you use them.
The tools that I use every day are pretty basic and you could fit the lot of them in half a small shoebox. I use a specialist knife, called a Clickers Knife, constantly. A sharp knife is the cornerstone of all leatherwork, and these have a forward hooked blade, that is quite stiff, but as sharp as a razor; it’ll cope with almost anything. Then I use a pair of leather shears regularly. An awl is a must have; the design hasn’t changed in thousands of years really. I use sturdy leather needles and linen thread to stitch most things with a traditional saddle stitch. I use a beveller to take the edge off leather after cutting it, giving it a more pleasing and long-lasting shape, and a tool called a groover to take a decorative channel out to stitch the leather in a neat line.
The item I use for all tooling and embossing on leather is a spoonshaped modelling tool. I soak the veg tan leather, then use it to scribe and force down leather into the lines I want. Most people use a technique developed in the 1950s, involving a specialist swivel-knife and hundreds of stamps, but I find it a bit too restrictive for me. I use a series of punches and a hammer for larger holes and for applying rivets and press-studs. The only other tool I use regularly is a strap cutter, a wooden device that lets you cut perfect parallel edged strapping from hides. Dyeing leather I normally do with cloth rags or sponges, although I’ve recently got into applying them with an airbrush. It’s not much at all, and you could get all of it for less than a hundred quid. We do have a sewing machine for sewing thinner leathers; it’s a foot treadle old Singer, made on the banks of the Clyde in 1919 and it has a lovely sound. Our tools are mainly the same as people have used for millennia, all handheld.
Ancestor Leathercrafts consists of myself and my older brother, who I trained up in leatherwork, which is good, as his stitching is much nicer than mine. We mostly make bags and pouches and armour, for all kinds of people, from film and TV, through to museums and re-enactors, and models – anyone really. We mostly work making commissions.
We’ve not done any courses as yet, although we plan to, but I got a reputation for being helpful, so I spend an hour or two every day answering questions and helping out leatherworkers I know, as well as starters in the craft. No point if you know this stuff to keeping it to yourself, knowledge should be shared.
My favourite makes are normally the one I have just finished. We’ve made a lot of nice bags, sturdy and practical, but with delicate design work on. Television work is always great fun, the demands for fine details are never as high as I put on myself, but it’s generally a high-speed turnaround of a load of stuff. You get the big heap of leather needed, and you look at it, and know that you’ve got two weeks to turn that into a load of armour that millions of people might see.
Please describe a typical day.
The lovely thing about being self employed is I can work my own hours, so I don’t do the 9-o’clock start thing, I generally start working at a much more civilised mid-day. The terrible thing about being self employed is I can never get away from work, and I tend to work until 2am most nights.
It suits me pretty well. I try and get admin out of the way, and then move onto most of the cutting and riveting I need to do for the day. Then it’s onto the hours of stitching and dying. I tend to like doing fiddly and focused work at night time, as I find my concentration and patience is at its highest then, so that’s when I do all my designing, tooling and painting work.
Long days, and pretty much the same all year round, and I always have music and documentaries and films on in the background, so it could be way worse!
What tradition ‘heritage’ methods do you use in your craft?
It’s all heritage skills really. You could give a Roman or medieval leatherworker almost all of my tools and he’d use them in the same way. Nothing has really changed in the craft for centuries. Tanneries and dye makers are the real pioneers in the field, but that means something new may appear every five years rather than the relentless march in almost all other crafts and trades. A lot of leather tooling that is carried out was developed by an American chap called Al Stohlman, and it uses specific shaped stamps to tool leather, he developed this process in the 1950s, but even that was drawing upon older techniques. The way I tool leather involves pushing it down with a rounded tool, and it possibly dates back to the Stone Age. Most of the stitching we do is a thoroughly traditional ‘saddle stitch’, and it’s pretty ubiquitous amongst leatherworkers and incredibly old. I was at Arbeia Roman Fort, in South Shields, doing a day on leatherwork and the museum staff brought out a bit of leatherwork that was excavated on the site. It was clearly a couple of bits of leather stitched together and another bit stitched over the top, but as the holes in it were the same size and shape made by modern awls, I could happily tell them that it was probably goatskin, and probably from a tent, and from the way the awl holes were in it (one line of neat same angled holes, one with the angles all over) that two people had stitched it; one who knew what he was doing, and one who wasn’t so proficient. The process they used to stitch it is no different from what almost all leatherworkers still use.
How have you adapted heritage or historic methods for the modern day?
Most of the processes are the same as the way leather has always been worked; cutting out your shapes, tooling them or shaping them, dying them, stitching or riveting them together. It was the same in the past. In some cases, other than a few cosmetic differences, a belt is no different now than it was a thousand years ago. People are pleasingly consistent with leather; we want attractive, well made things, the aesthetics may change slightly, but that’s about it. When we are making bags, we are often asked to add a pocket big enough to add a smartphone in, or we may get asked to make a cover for a tablet, so it’s the demands of technology wanting to be protected or carried about really.
When it comes to making armour, the demands of the human body are no different to those of the past. It has to encase the body, but not restrict its movements, and that has been the challenge of armour makers throughout the ages. As to whether people actually wore a lot of leather armour, well, you could write a whole contentious book on that. The making of armour, masks and some of our pouches involves a process called wet-moulding, where you immerse the veg-tan leather in warm water, then shape it (by hand or over a former of some kind), and as it dries it will hold that shape as long as the item is well waterproofed. The taste for this runs high at the moment; from historic film and TV fans wanting something similar, through LARPers cosplayers and re-enactors, but also for people who want something inspired by our past, but strong, well made and aesthetically pleasing.
Modern dyes are the real shift away for me. There’s been a lot of developments in this in the past few years, and generally it’s been in the right direction. I always used dyes in the standard way of applying them with a cloth (or sponge) but I have recently got hold of an airbrush, and this has made dyeing a lot more predictable, and a lot of the effects (such as fades in colours) a lot easier. When it comes to the more colourful decorations on pieces, I use totally up to the minute acrylics, thinned and mixed with a flexing medium, but applied with paintbrushes, so that’s very much the best of the traditional and the contemporary really.
The real impact that technology has made, is in the people you can reach with this stuff. Social media has shrunk the world for artists and craftsmen of all kinds, and our Facebook page is followed by people from all over the world, which blows my mind. Twenty years ago, it would have been hard to get people from elsewhere in the country to see your work, never mind people in other parts of the world seeing it and buying it. Thanks to social media, we have sold things as far as Australia, and have returning customers in Germany and America.
What advice would you give someone starting out in your field?
Get making. It’s the only way to learn.
YouTube has a load of info and tutorials, but go and find a leatherworker and talk to them. Then find another and you will find a different way to do the same thing, because leatherworkers are like that. We all develop our own way to do things. Try and soak all that up, you’ll soon develop your own way too. Start with a simple project; make a belt. You’ll use minimum tools and you can often buy pre-cut leather straps online, get a buckle to attach on it, get an awl, get some leather needles and some linen thread. If you hate it, you will have spent less money than you would on a half-decent belt and you will probably still have a reasonable belt.
Then move on to making a pouch, you’ll use a different leather, maybe a couple more tools, but you’ll be stitching more. Then make a bag or a mask and your skills will increase with each. Talk to as many leatherworkers as you can find; if you are lucky to have a leather merchants nearby, go in and ask some questions. Ask about courses. Like most crafts, it’s a few pointers, then hours of making practice. Social media seems pretty good for things too; there is a host of great Facebook groups, with loads of people sharing tips and hints and showing off their work and asking questions. Be aware, though, that ten leatherworkers will have eight ways of doing things and they will all claim their way is the best way, and they are all correct.
If you enjoy leatherwork, it’s enormously rewarding; you can spend a few hours and then you have a fully functional thing at the end of it; that’s quite exciting, and also kind of addictive. Your hands will ache from stitching, your clothes and skin will end up covered in dye, you will stab and cut yourself a myriad of times, but you will be satisfied; and you will be doing and feeling the same thing as untold numbers of people have before you, as you will have become one stitch in the very long thread of leatherworkers reaching all the way back to the beginning of humanity.
https://www.facebook.com/AncestorLeathercrafts/
www.etsy.com/uk/shop/AncestorLeathercraft
Andy Bates runs Phenix Studios in Hexham, Northumberland. He is an expert in archaeological interpretation and reconstruction, using traditional materials and techniques. He has worked with museums, universities, theatre companies, production and television companies, The National Trust and English Heritage.
His philosophy: ‘Ensuring the vitality of Living Heritage through our ability to Interpret, Create and Educate.’
What drew you to leathercraft in the first place?
I did English and archaeology at university and I’ve always made stuff and sort of tinkered with things. As part of my degree, I wrote a dissertation on Anglo-Saxon helmets and I thought I’m going to make a helmet and see how it goes. I made one and I really got on with the leather, and I did some of that re-enactment stuff back in the 80s and 90s. Ended up making my own stuff. I really got an appreciation for leather and the fact it’s been a living material and the fact it’s come from animals and that means it needs to be respected. There’s a real relationship you can develop to it. So I started exploring that and I started off making historical pieces and I got the odd commission from museums. I got to the point where I thought, I’m really enjoying this, maybe it’s time I jump ship from the regular jobs and start doing this full time.
Did you do any sort of formalised training to start with or are you self-taught?
I tinkered with it for a few years making sort of re-enactment stuff, and then I thought I really need to get my skills sorted out so I went to find someone; there was a saddler, a guy called Maurice Savage down in County Durham. This was back in the early 90s. I worked alongside him and he got me to do stuff for a few months. I got some of the basics from him and apart from that, taught myself. I picked up every book I could find, anywhere, with making the historical stuff, quite often I got given an original piece to have a look at, to work out how it was made, how it was put together, what it was used for.
Have there been any people or historic periods that you’ve been influenced by?
There have been. Obviously in terms of sort of bags and designers I have been influenced, maybe subliminally. There’s no one person but historically yes, there’s been lots of influences. Originally it was early medieval stuff; really got into that. But it’s actually been pretty much every period, because what I’ve found is when you are researching historical and archaeological things you can trace developments; you can trace people; you can trace people moving through this kind of continuum, over thousands and thousands of years, and using fundamentally the same techniques in different environments. You can – and this is going to sound esoteric – feel the person behind the work. You really get kind of inside them and start looking at it from their perspective and really you just feel them.
Is there a particular style you’d say that you’ve made your own?
I don’t know to be honest, I think if there were it would probably be the kind of wet moulding process because I think I explored that to a very high degree, and made all kinds of stuff with that from building a complete suit of armour made to look like metal – but made in leather with tiny mouldings. We made three golden helmets for the Beowulf TV show out of leather. Each one had 280 separate pieces. Some of these were tiny panels which we worked with this moulding process.
I made some of the armour for a Discovery Channel programme called The Bone Detective at Bamburgh Castle. There were loads of bodies at Bamburgh, some of which had horrific wounds inflicted upon them, so we experimented with a sword maker from London, and a cuirass that I’d made earlier and it was just moulded leather, nothing more complicated than that and it was incredibly resistant to sword cuts. It was about 4mm thick. I think a lot of modern researchers have this habit of wanting to make things unnecessarily complicated, where actually if they could just reduce it down to its bare essentials. If it works, it’s probably what they did.
What is the one thing that you’d made that you are most proud of?
A bag I made for Grayson Perry actually, not because of what he wanted, more because of the sort of technical problems that it presented. I think Grayson Perry’s absolutely brilliant, I think his stuff’s just stunning, he’s an amazing man, but he’s not a leather crafter so he sent me these illustrations of this bag and I’m thinking, how the hell would I shape that? I had to kind of mould it in these very specific panels for pleats, so I had to mould it and then cool the leather, and then bind the edges and incorporate a tangerine satin lining. And then it was moulding, I had to mould pimples onto the shape as well. I had to find materials to stuff parts of it, to give it the right degree of firmness and use materials that to my knowledge haven’t been used before. Ended up using the stuff that dentists take a mould of your teeth with to stuff it because you can pack it in to spaces and it’s…
Quite turgid?
Yeah, that’s a very good word, yes, very squidgy. It took me months to work it out and do it so it was, from a technical and creative point of view, probably the most satisfying. I had to literally invent new techniques so it was great to do that.
Do you have a typical day when you’re working?
They vary from day to day, can be anything from the basic (admin) and getting emails out and stuff to sitting down and just making whatever it is that I’m currently working on. Or it might be research – maybe just reading or visiting museums and galleries. If it’s working away like we did when we made armour for The Iliad, in Edinburgh last year, it entails travelling round the country, meeting actors, measuring actors and going to the theatre and working up there as well. On stage and off stage, having these great big butch actors waving these swords around coming up saying, ‘It’s chafing a bit up here’, and we’ll just shave a bit off.
How much teaching do you do?
A little bit at the moment but this year it’s going to get very busy, because we’re going to have the national leathercraft centre in Northampton and eventually, satellite premises around the country delivering these courses as well, so I’ll be teaching people, but also teaching people to teach people, and assessing. We’re doing that with NCFE. Teaching is one of the things I enjoy the most actually. People create this thing and they’re just amazed by it, something they’ve created with their own hands and what have you, just has an amazingly beneficial effect, just, just, that’s just priceless. That’s what it’s about. You’re also continuing the craft, you’re implanting a lot of seeds as well.
You have these skills, this knowledge and this experience and you need to pass them on at some point, you’re part of this continuum, I think; you’re kind of a channel to channel towards other people and keep it going, it’s not just manual skill either, it’s sort of an attitude towards it.
How would you say you have adapted traditional methods?
I don’t use sewing machines; everything’s hand stitched. The tools I use are traditional, they’ve been around for centuries. The shape of the knife, the round knife that’s the kind of traditional (saddlers) leatherworking tool, that shape of knife has been around since the early–middle of the Bronze Age, probably beyond. They’re all very traditional. If I need a tool for a particular purpose and I have to make it, I tend to look to traditional tools for inspiration for doing it. They’ll be in natural materials so when I was moulding these sets of armour, there’s no particular tool, so I got some antlers and I polished them and rounded the ends off, got a nice curve, pressing into the leather, into the musculature of the armour. If I’m making things for museums which might be leather though, I work with other materials as well and I quite often use the tools from the period. I’ve got an old saddler’s tack hammer with the handles a bit kind of warped, and it’s really grubby with grease from all the hands and it’s lovely thinking that people have used this for hundreds of years and I’m using it now.
What other materials do you work in?
Bone, antler, wood, metals sometimes, plant fibres…I kind of got into that a bit with the museum stuff. I don’t do textiles, it’s a bit too specialist, but what I find is a general repertoire of techniques, there’s crossover, like a Venn diagram, and if you know something about one material, you’ve probably got an idea of how to go about working with another.
What advice would you give to somebody who starting out?
It’ll be a lot quicker if you can find someone who can teach you rather than trying to teach yourself. Find a good teacher, stick at it, if you want to do it, just do it. Just go for it, it may take a while to get to that point but jump ship and do it. Nothing better, just make that decision and do it.
Tell me a little more about the book you are writing.
It’s been great, I am trying to get in every technique that’s been used for leather, ever, and describe it, keep it short and punchy, and at the same time it has to be interesting. Hopefully anybody can pick it up and go yeah, there’s everything I need to know here. It’s not the sort of text book that’s saying, ‘this is the way to do it and there’s no other way to do it’. I’ve said right at the start, this is what I’ve done, this is how I do it, this is how I think it works. If you have another way of doing it, do that. Whatever works for you. It’s due out this year.
https://www.facebook.com/AndyBatesLeatherStudio/
Angelique Taylor runs The Raven’s Daughter, from Manchester. She makes bespoke and unique pieces such as wallets, belts, wrist bands, masks, dog collars and knife sheaths. Many of her pieces are ‘wearable art’ and feature accurate star maps of the constellations. She often uses crystals and animal totems in her work.
What first attracted you to your craft?
Having spent many years going to biker rallies I always liked to look at the leather goods stalls, I found however that they were all very directed towards a male market. I was always looking for something else but never found it.
Can you describe your journey into your craft?
After leaving university I had qualifications in art and design, design crafts and photography. I worked as a professional photographer and dabbled as a florist too so I was always looking for a creative outlet. I took a temp job in an office and I ended up being the operations manager but I hated it.
I woke up one morning and thought I just can’t do this anymore. I sold everything I owned, jacked in the day job, cleared all debt, and for the first time in years I was free. At first this freedom thing was scary; I had a few hundred quid and no plan. Well, I was committed now so I left the city and went to live in Cornwall. On a day trip out to Padstow I happened upon Steve Brooks and his shop Bag End Leather. I was buzzing at everything he had for sale so I started asking questions and asked him to make me a cuff there. I did a sketch – nothing fancy – but the inspiration stuck. Leathercraft was for me. Money dwindling and living on packet noodles – but happier than I’d ever been. I knew this was what I was meant to be doing.
Do you have any inspirations or influences?
The themes in my work are influenced by my interests. I love Astronomy and can remember being a kid standing in my back garden with my Dad holding a planisphere and looking up at the constellations. I was fascinated at the beauty above me, the same as our predecessors would have been. I’m into mysticism and the occult, so you can find running themes in these subjects too appearing alongside nature or pop culture references. So, my influences are pretty eclectic! I find myself waking up with ideas in the middle of the night, to be swiftly scribbled down on paper or the back of my hand then upon waking find a load of backwards nonsense on my face!
What do you enjoy most about working with the materials that you choose to work with?
Leather as a medium is a tricky mistress. You can achieve the most amazing and beautiful results but it requires a lot of work and sometimes serendipity. Leather is unlike clay or canvas, because the exact same hide can tool and colour completely differently with each piece, as you’re dealing with something that was a living creature. It can be frustrating especially when you’ve got customers waiting, but this is an art form and should be treated as such.
Please describe the tools of your craft, and how you use them.
The tools I use are pretty industry standard. I use a swivel knife to cut the design into the leather and then follow this with a beveller and hammer. Using backgrounder and matting stamps to add detail, I work in an intuitive way – basically making it up as I go along! So, I don’t follow the traditional guidelines set down by the western tooling masters i.e. this tool for that etc. Why do things the way everyone else does? You’ll just end up with a cookie cutter product.
Describe your business.
When I started out I wanted a name that reflected that I was female, as this industry traditionally is male dominated, so I chose The Raven’s Daughter. I still get blokes saying, ‘You made this?’
I make mainly small leather goods, but when time is permitting I like to make bags or basically anything with a tooled design. I mostly sell online, and every single sale is a buzz to me that someone out there in the world thinks my item is the one for them. To think I’ve sent items to far-flung places across the globe, that I have never been to, just blows my mind.
Please describe a typical day.
I do the admin first and get that out of the way; check overnight orders and reply to emails/queries etc. The rest of the day is spent making orders, creating new items or photographing them and updating my online store.
What tradition ‘heritage’ methods do you use in your craft?
The use of animal skins has been around since time as we know it began – not only in a utilitarian way but for decorative purpose too. The technique of scribing a design onto leather is not so far away now from how it first began. The leather I use for tooling is veg tanned, which has been tanned the same way using the bark and leaves of trees since ancient times. The process makes the leather more environmentally friendly and kind to the wearer’s skin as it has no nasty chemicals so is a perfect choice for artisan leather goods.
How have you adapted heritage or historic methods for the modern day?
I produce my leatherwork using the same traditional techniques which our ancestors would have done, working by hand and hammering into the leather, with the addition of hand stitching. I find this is the only way to get the results and quality I desire in the end product.
What advice would you give someone starting out in your field?
When I first started out I found that people were not too helpful, and perversely this helped me because it made me find my own way. Today, Tandy Leather in Manchester are more than happy to help, and have a great informal drop-in where you can get help from experienced leathercrafters.
Join some forums. Leather worker.net is a great resource full of encouragement and help. Get some books, but mainly jump in and make mistakes – that’s how you’ll learn. Success is built on many, many, mistakes.
When you meet another leathercrafter in person don’t be afraid to pick their brain. If we don’t share this fascinating craft then it has no future. Find your own way; create the item you wanted but couldn’t find in the first place and others will see it and want it.
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Lacey Jean tans skins and hides using heritage and what she calls ‘primitive’ methods.
What first attracted you to your craft?
I found myself drawn to sheepskins and leather goods crafted by local artisans and farms but was discouraged to find that most were tanned using a chemical process. It seemed a shame that something as natural as an animal was being heavily processed after death to preserve it. I wanted to make something that was both practical, beautiful and with a resource that was underused or discarded. I have always longed to have a skill that was needed and necessary but not common. I found in our culture that we have an aversion to death and for many, the subject is taboo. I felt differently. I don’t think of death as pain as I think many do. There is necessity in death. It is part of the cycle and even in it, there can be beauty and life. I see this pattern in nature and have found that many cultures that live close to the land and wild things understand this.
Can you describe your journey into your craft? How did you get started? For example, do you have particular training or qualifications, or are you self-taught?
I knew that native cultures have long been preserving skins and utilizing them for garments, warmth, décor, belts, boots, mattresses, cushions and beyond. I began reading and researching how it was done long ago. I was not surprised to find many articles that touted the longevity of leather garments and pelts that were traditionally tanned versus newer methods. It fanned the flame that I had begun to kindle for this craft and I have spent several years practising and often failing to hone this skill. As with many old methods, much of the process had to do with what was available in the region. Some cultures used bark, some brain and smoke, some salted, some left the skin to freeze in the elements, some chewed the hide to break it down, some strung the skin onto a frame. I realised that while I could spend hours mimicking a particular method, I would need to take stock of what was available to me, my own limitations and the climate I live in and make my own way.
Do you have any inspirations or influences? This could include particular artisans, periods in history etc.
I am heavily influenced by my ancestors. My heritage includes Norwegian, Irish and a smattering of Native American. Every culture has its own way of preserving the animals they raised or hunted to make the most of the resource, but I found inspiration from my own heritage. Many of my close relatives have raised sheep and I have a fondness for them. I now raise my own, a primitive breed from Iceland, and it is my vision to utilise every bit of each animal that I raise. Wool, meat, milk, horns, bone, skulls…etc. I will sometimes tan deerskin, rabbit and other critters, but sheep is my mainstay.
What do you enjoy most about working with the materials that you choose to work with?
It is hard work. It feels very primitive, very sacred and meditative. I feel I am connecting to ways that have long been forgotten, bringing them back to life as I feel I am giving new life to these skins. With care, primitive tanned leathers and pelts can last hundreds of years. I ship my wares all over the world now and it feels very special to know that my craft is being enjoyed in the comfort of many homes around the world, hopefully offering warmth and comfort in the simplest way that humans have known for eons.
Please describe the tools of your craft, and how you use them.
I tell most people that my hands are my most used tool. They have become hardened, muscular and calloused. I am proud that my work is reflected in them. I also use old kitchen rocker knives. They are in a crescent shape and they allow me to clean the hides. I have built several wood frames on which I string the skins to stretch them. Most of the time I use the same kitchen rocker knife, sometimes I use a smooth hammer handle to push into the skin to stretch them. They are then smoked over a fire, washed and as they dry, I oil them and stretch them over a sharpened post that my husband built me for that very purpose.
Describe your business. What items do you make? Do you sell items – if so, what? Do you teach courses? Describe the thing you have made that has made you most proud.
I do indeed sell my wares. Quite by accident, to be honest. I began my craft to simply fill my home with the things I made and I considered it a hobby. Friends began requesting sheepskins and now I find myself with a waiting list that I have had to close as I have too many requests to fill. I have begun cleaning the skulls as well and have a waitlist for them now. My next venture will be making jewellery and buttons from the horns. I am most proud of some of the very first sheepskins I ever tanned, nearly four years ago now. They are in my living room, used every day as cushions. They have been carted outside to sit on during picnics and bonfires, they are used to add warmth to mattresses in the cold of winter. The cats and dogs all love to curl up on them as well. They have been washed several times but retain their integrity and beauty. It feels so satisfying to know that my work has contributed to the aesthetic of my home as well as the quality of our days. And now the work being sold allows us more freedom as a family to pursue the things which we enjoy. Most of which is our farm. We are excited to see it grow as an outcome of my income.
You can explore Lacey Jean’s work on Instagram