Buckle

Four a month

One bench · two needles · no machine

Next slot: March

An aerial view of snow and dark rock cut through by a meltwater channel.

A hide makes four bags, and I make them in the order they were asked for

No machine has touched anything here. Every seam is two needles and one thread going in opposite directions, which takes eleven hours on a shoulder bag and does not come undone when a stitch breaks.

The four bags

The four

There are four. They have been the same four for six years and they will be the same four next year. Any of them in any of the three leathers, and the price does not change with the colour.

A structured red leather handbag standing upright.

The satchel

£680

Two compartments, a flap, one buckle that actually does something. Holds a laptop and a lunch and nothing else, which is the point. Eleven hours.

A curved facade of stacked balconies in black and white.

The evening one

£420

Small, hard-sided, with a chain that is solid brass and heavier than people expect. The only one with a lining, in cotton, replaceable.

A hand holding a small dark object up to the light.

The pouch

£160

One piece of leather, four seams, no hardware at all. The first thing anybody makes here and the thing most people buy first.

Turquoise ice floating in a pale lagoon, seen from above.

The weekend bag

£1,240

Uses most of a hide on its own, which is why it is one a quarter and why the price is what it is. Thirty-one hours, and it will outlive me.

One hide at a time

Vegetable-tanned, from a tannery in the same country as the animal, bought whole and used whole. The back makes the structured pieces, the belly makes the pouches, and the offcuts are a box by the door that school groups empty twice a year.

Three colours, because three is what I can stock without tying up money in leather that sits in a drawer going darker.

Hides used last year31

Bags from a hidefour, sometimes three

Threadwaxed linen, 0.6 mm

Hardwaresolid brass, one supplier since 2016

Leather thrown awaynone, and I mean none

Red glass and drifting smoke on a dark table.
Snow and rock from the air, a pale channel running through the middle.

Nine years later

The oldest bag that has come back was nine. It needed a strap, an edge burnished and nothing else. This is what happens when yours does.

Stitching, free, forever
Any seam that has gone, any time, no matter who owns the bag by then. It takes an afternoon and it is the least I can do for something I sold as permanent.
Straps at cost
A shoulder strap is the part that wears out. A new one is £45, which is the leather and the brass, and the hours are mine.
Edges, re-burnished
Free, while you have a coffee. It is the difference between a bag that looks old and one that looks neglected, and it takes twenty minutes.
Linings replaced
£60 on the evening bag. Nothing else here has a lining, deliberately, because a lining is the thing you cannot repair without taking the bag apart.
I will say when it is finished
Leather that has dried out and cracked through cannot be saved by anybody, and you should not pay me to pretend otherwise.
Bags I did not make
Yes, if it is hand-stitched, and no if it is machine-sewn — the holes are wrong and the repair will look worse than the tear.

Nothing here is branded on the outside. There is a maker's mark and a year stamped inside the back panel, and that is the whole of it.

A red leather bag photographed from the front.

The list

Four a month, and the list is currently about four months. You pay half when the hide is cut, which is when I know exactly what your bag is coming out of, and half when it is finished.

If you change your mind before the cut you get everything back. After the cut you get the bag, because the hide is spoken for.

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