Leather UK releases the Art of Leather, its first ever collection of the UK’s most exciting leather makers and creators

There’s a new found pride and renaissance in British manufacturing, but some businesses have been tirelessly flying the flag for generations. One such example is Owen Barry, the Somerset-based family firm that mother and daughter duo, Cindi and Chas Barnstable were born into, and which boasts a “made in Britain” heritage dating back to 1948. And its roots in the leather industry go back further, to the late 1800s when great, great, great grandparents Walter and Amy Barry ran the first tiny Barry family tannery in Wiltshire.

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Martina Spetlova’s stunning woven leather techniques have graced the runway at London Fashion Week and caught the discerning eye of Selfridges who sell the colourful jackets that she is best known for.

Credit: Kasia Wozniak

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Mark Evans is an artist who defies classification. He works to a monumental, epic scale, creating works that enthrall audiences with their power, their drama and their virtuoso technique.

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Joshua Millard’s store in Soho, London, complete with workshop, welcomes a loyal clientele of women who adore his luxurious yet refined tailored style. And while Millard has extensive training in classical tailoring, his aesthetic is anything but traditional, with designs that demonstrate a lightness of touch, clean lines and movement.

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Iseabal Hendry’s hand-woven leather textiles are wonderfully intricate, inspired by the traditional basket making, roof thatching and carpentry of her Scottish Highland home. But as an embroidery graduate from the Glasgow School of Art, it is Iseabal’s delicate take on leather, which she combines with fine cotton before hand-weaving, that makes her work so unique.

Credit: Calum Douglas

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Echoes of Charles Laurie’s forebears can be seen in the strong, beautiful leather found in his bags, cases and luggage. Saddlery runs deep in his veins, traceable to a family-owned workshop in Oxford Street making in the 1800s harnesses for carriages drawn by six horses, the Ferraris of their time.

Credit: Emma Lee

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A Baa Stool creation delivers a moment of pure joy. It’s impossible not to smile when you see one – indeed the company’s mantra is ‘style with a smile’. Their products inspire oohs and aahs and provide comfort and delight in homes all over the UK and in the US which has also discovered the Baa Stool pleasure factor.

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Artist Georgina Brett Chinnery creates sculptural, poetic pieces that transfix with their uncanny likeness to the birds and other creatures that she is clearly fascinated by. She uses beautiful leather hides that she transforms by a skillful metamorphosis of moulding, embossing, tooling, gilding and painting. The result is an artform that has incredible energy and realism; her vision is beautiful, sometimes unsettling, occasionally whimsical.

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When Emma and Steve Allum charged Relocation, Relocation’s, Phil and Kirstie with finding them a property with a few acres of land, a two-hour drive in any direction from Bristol where Steve was working in government, little did they know that 17 years on they would have a smallholding with sheep and goats and be running Wales’s only organic tannery!

Today, their Carmarthenshire tannery transforms around 1,000 skins a year into the softest sheep and goatskins, items of beauty that last a lifetime. The Welsh Organic Tannery’s online store sells limited quantities of rugs, cushion covers, seat pads and footstools made from the various breeds of livestock the Allum’s raise themselves or which they secure from a local abattoir.

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Alice Robinson and Sara Grady are pioneers. They have created a traceable supply chain to produce leather entirely from British livestock that is reared according to the principles of regenerative farming.

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Peter Bird, Spire’s managing director, is well placed to sense a change in attitudes towards leather. He runs one of the UK’s smaller tanneries, set up in the mid-1800s in Chesterfield, producing high-quality leathers for many different industries. He’s expecting the post pandemic years to be some of the best the company has had since he became MD in 2018.

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J. & F.J. Baker is a place steeped in history and tradition, the last practitioner of a very British craft, and pretty much unique worldwide. From its location in a small town in rural Devon with a 20-person team it produces a material of the utmost luxury, in demand from the most exclusive brands and makers globally. That material is the highest quality, oak bark tanned leather made lovingly using age-old techniques in a tannery run by sixth and seventh generation tanners.

Credit: www.otzilondon.com

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Fashion designer Karl Donoghue is synonymous with modern, relaxed shearling and leather. His designs are elegant and fluid with a contemporary edge. He is a technical innovator, pushing the boundaries of the finest raw material he can source to its limits, so that it becomes incredibly soft and lightweight, resulting in a luxurious garment that is wearable and versatile.

Credit: Jeremy Baile

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Katy Warriner’s covetable bags and other leather items are lovingly handmade in her Devon workshop. She uses only vegetable- tanned, British bovine leather, supplied by the UK’s last surviving traditional oak-bark tannery, J.&F.J. Baker, just 25 miles away in Colyton. Leather that is slowly tanned in this way using responsibly-sourced British oak bark, produces gorgeous earthy tones that allow the natural features of the leather to shine through. When you buy from Warriner Leather Works you’re investing in a high- quality product that not only lasts a lifetime but becomes more beautiful with age; it’s the very epitome of slow fashion.

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Tania Clarke Hall’s jewellery turns heads and starts conversations. Her pieces are striking in size, shape, form, colour and technique. Indeed, Prue Leith is a fan and is often seen wearing one of Tania’s designs. But what’s most surprising is the core material she uses in her designs – leather. Yet it’s leather as you’ve never seen it before – a subtle yet bold, innovative, playful yet sophisticated approach to working with the material, and ultimately to jewellery design itself, that breaks conventions.

Credit: Pari Naderi

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