I am very passionate about the materials I use, sourcing only the highest quality for all my work. All pieces are made using beautiful natural vegetable tanned leather.

A material of contrasts - strong, yet fragile, it’s so robust yet treat it wrong and it will soon let you know.

Leather is a sustainable material, a natural up-cycled by-product preventing millions of tons of waste each year.  Long lasting and repairable, leather has a significant place in human history and civilisations with some incredible archaeological evidence surviving. Used for centuries for its strength, versatility, functionality and of course its beauty.  I feel by honouring and respecting leather I am celebrating the magnificence of this wonderful animal and allowing its existence to continue in another form to be treasured into the future.

I dye the leather predominately using water based dyes to enhance and retain the tactile natural character of leather, to show the beauty with all the natural scaring, growth marks and imperfections preserved.  Each piece of leather has its own unique texture and structure, causing both excitement and slight trepidation as the same process on two pieces can produce variations in finish.

I prefer using dyes to acrylics as I feel although acrylics offer a unified finished they conceal so much natural beauty.

For stitching I use high quality 100% British linen thread, I hand wax the natural fibres with beeswax, also using beeswax for burnishing which produces a lovely natural finish.

My hand tools, I love them!  Many have been with me since the beginning, and it’s always lovely to acquire a new tool you then can’t live without.  Tools are an extension of our hands, it’s important how we handle them and practice using them, to gel with them so they seem to effortlessly land in our hand ready to work. Tools are simply beautiful.

Extensive techniques and tools can be applied to leather, with continual experimentation I am constantly learning, often surprising results can lead to a change in direction or to further exploration.

I use no machinery in my work, preferring the closeness and slow process of small hand tools on leather. With each stage of the piece there are subtle traces of my hand and my thoughts which I find quite charming. It’s really exciting to continue experimenting and developing my work in leather to promote traditional craft making in natural materials.

My practice is rooted in the closeness of slow making, this closeness involves understanding and much respect for both the beautiful natural leather and my tools.  Sometimes you feel you are working with the leather other times it’s as if the leather has other ideas it’s strong willed and wants to test you, to keep you on your toes, which I just love, this strengthens my obsession.

Using a variety of techniques, manipulating the leather to build a range of densities and textures, with patience, precision and an infinite number of hammer blows some marks are well planned others more instinctive and intuitive.  A slow and absorbing practice, many of the techniques can be quite intense and mediative and the memory of the making stays with me, I remember making specific marks, the rhythm of working a tool to create a texture and imagine the finished shape as I work on the form.

Once the carving is complete the leather is oiled and hand dyed with enough colour to enhance the carving creating depth and tone, not to lose the richness and character of the natural leather.

Hand stitching is very slow, yet pulling the thread through to make each stitch and piercing each hole for the next stitch is insanely satisfying.  Then to follow that with the heat building in the cloth in your hand as you burnish the leather, this is closeness.