A Manifesto for Leather on the occasion of COP29 Buy better, buy less, buy leather Consumption is one of the key drivers for man-made climate change. Consumers are driven to want more, buy more and ultimately discard more and more products, many of which are of poor quality, have short life spans and are designed […]
Strong statement from Textile Exchange on how they will define leather
In their November 1922 Newsletter, the Textile Exchange how they would in future define leather. This is the definition the leather industry has been using throughout the 20th century and on, but has failed to enforce. Italy recently passed a new law supporting this approach and Brazil did so as far back as the 1960s […]
Times change
For those who watch this website and in particular the blog you may have noticed that below the waterline quite a lot has been happening. I have been steadily trying starting to update some parts of the website and to improve the ease of reading. A new timeline for gloves has been introduced and will […]
Leather was first made a million years ago.
I took this photo of Roy Thomson in 2013. He had just been awarded a PhD by the University of Northampton for a thesis entitled “The role of leather science and technology in heritage conservation”. Sadly he passed away on Monday 14th June 2021. He had completed the leather degree at Leeds University some nine […]
Leather through the ages
Note: I wrote this in 2003 but the area it covers means I have not updated it, only corrected a few spelling and grammatical errors. It is a short read that I hope everyone finds interesting. Leather in ancient history was an important material. It was functional in a multitude of uses from armour to a […]
The written word spread wide
This item first appeared in International Leather Maker in June 2021 It has led to a lot of correspondence and comments and I am minded to try and take it somewhere. Here are the key points: I would like to get more of the colleges that teach leather in any way around the world to […]
Mary Chan won the 2020 Design-a-Bag competition
I was very pleased to be invited to interview Mary Chan who won last year’s APLF Design-a-Bag competition with an really clever use of leather to produce a design that perfectly meet the very specific criteria. It is really inspiring to hear her talk about her material choice and thoughts on sustainability. The video is […]
Japan and its leather
In the same way that every grandparent will tell you that their grandchild is exceptional, every Japanese will tell you the same about their country. With the grandparent you smile benignly and hurry back to reality, but with Japan it is different, as more often than not Japan is truly different. Riello (2008) consistently highlights […]
A Confusion of Names
Anyone with a training in leathermaking soon becomes confused when faced by the various names given to the leather in historic gloves. This is not so much a matter of error but rather a question of how difficult it is to identify species in glove leather when a great variety of origins and processing methods […]
Italian success. Leather is Leather: no exceptions allowed
I am not a great fan of lobbying. Too often it is about businesses failing to realise that change is happening or that uncomfortable science needs to be accepted, and trying to hold society back through the power of their wealth. Sometimes though it is necessary and the little guy makes a breakthrough. The Italian […]
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