What I do, I class myself as a leather craftsman. It encompasses such a wide variety of trades.
It was derived from hundreds and hundreds of years ago from basically cobblers, harness makers,
saddlers, right the way through to case makers, which as modern livings come on, it's, you know,
plastics and things have replaced the leather products, but gradually it's all coming back in.
But unfortunately in that period, all the tradesmen that were involved with these things have died off.
So I tried to fill a gap and pick up the slack where these trades have disappeared.
Restoration in my book, as a leather worker, I try and avoid because the definition of restoration
is making something look like new. I much prefer the word refurbish or refurbishment,
bringing it back into a workable condition.
Some of the stuff that I get, some of the cases that I have are covered in its own history.
It has its own character, it has its own partner. I can make a brand new case and it'll look like a brand new case.
There's no point in taking away all that character, all that pattern, all that history
to produce something that's going to last for 20 years. The knack of it all, and this is what I hear from the customers mostly,
is that what they want is a well-used but a well-loved look.
So if I can bring it back and enhance its own character, keep all the marks, the scratches, the rubs, the burnishes, the labels.
This is what the whole idea of refurbishment is, is to keep this character and to preserve this age and history,
rather than trying to, you know, to put a glitz and a shine on it.
This is a case that's come in today, typical of the type of restoration I get on cases.
It's a client's attaché case. In London he's a barrister.
Very much like ladies in their handbags, gents have their foibles about their cases they want to keep.
So it's worth him, it's familiar, it's comfortable, and he just loves his case.
So he could easily buy another one, but I think he much prefers to have the old one back in a workable condition.
You can see the state it's in. What happens to cases of this era?
The leather is in very good condition really, but what tends to happen is the linen thread and stitching tends to fail first.
The check straps here that attach the top to the bottom have broken, which in due course has put a lot of pressure on the back here
and then split all the seams, and then just general wear on the corners.
It's a typical 1940s case, so we've got to try and keep that 60 years of age on it,
so anything that's addition to it has got to carry that age.
And then we just take it from there, it's a bit of a slow process, but we'll get there in the end.
