The Leathersellers invests in projects to protect and share the history of British leather

A commission to write a history of the British leather industry has led to the discovery of a nationally important archive, now being catalogued for the first time.

As part of the Leathersellers’ wider ambition to protect, share, and celebrate the national history of British leather, a project to catalogue the archive of Leather UK has begun.

Dr Ian Stone, who has been significantly funded by the Leathersellers to write a book about the history of the British leather industry 1800-2000, discovered the importance of the archive in the course of undertaking his research.

The archive was originally at the Museum of Leathercraft (now The Leathercraft Trust) in Northampton before being moved to Leathersellers’ Hall last year.

A Project Cataloguer, Rebecca Darnill, has started work on the project, which will be completed prior to the archive’s move to the Modern Records Centre, Warwick University, later in 2025. The Modern Records Centre contains the archives of many other trade organisations, making the Leather UK archive a natural fit with their collections.

Dr Stone says: “The archive could have been broken up or left in deep storage, but there is immense value in making it publicly available and keeping it together as a complete archive – if it was dispersed, we would risk losing sight of the many interconnected details.”

“What this archive shows,” continues Dr Stone “and what we still see today, is that the Leathersellers are very close to their trade. They have supported the British leather industry in a number of different ways, not just through providing grants and expertise but also offering their Hall for the trade organisations to convene and working in close collaboration with various institutes to achieve nationally important outcomes, for example, the establishment of the Leather Trades School in Bethnal Green in 1887, the Leathersellers’ Technical College in Bermondsey in 1909, and the National Centre for Leather Education in 1976, which would become the Institute for Creative Leather Technologies at the University of Northampton.”

Working under the supervision of the Leathersellers’ Archivist Kate Higgins, Rebecca is also collaborating with a senior archivist at the Modern Records Centre to ensure that the archive is catalogued in accordance with their in-house system and can therefore be transferred easily.

Part of her role includes ensuring accessibility in a number of ways, from cataloguing to removing duplicate documents and checking which items need conservation.

Kate Higgins says: “The Leather UK archive’s importance lies partly in the fact that there are few other surviving archives documenting the history of the leather industry in this country at a national level. It provides vital evidence of the work not only of Leather UK and its predecessors for over a century but also that of related trade organisations.”

The cataloguing project is being jointly funded by the Leathersellers and the British Leather Industry Development Trust.