The Educators

A quest for knowledge then led them to the Museum of Leathercraft in Northampton, where they were given unique access to the museum archives, studying fragile pieces of leather from the 17th and 18th centuries as well as the quilting and moulding that went into one of Queen Victoria’s saddles. All of which, says Val, “turned us on to even more possibilities of working with leather.”

Later, the makers upped sticks to the quaint Cotswolds town of Tetbury. Notes Valerie: “We quickly knew that we wanted to improve on our stitching and other leather techniques so I showed up at David Barnes’ workshop, the local saddler, and after he had stopped laughing at my terrible samples, he sat me down and showed me how to stitch properly. He also gave other invaluable tips about the sequence and rhythm of stitching. After that, we were off!”

Today, the pair make pieces to commission for furniture maker, Mathew Burt and gunmakers, Holland & Holland and James Purdy & Sons. Their own-label pieces – beautiful briefcases and bags made from vegetable-tanned leathers supplied by the same British tannery, J&FJ Baker, since 1974 – are sold through the Gloucestershire Guild Shop in Cheltenham. And then there’s the exquisite bespoke trunk Neil crafted from a roll of 200-year-old Russian leather that divers salvaged from a shipwreck, but that’s a whole other story.

Valerie and Neil’s leatherworking courses include taster weekends, six-day courses and spring and summer schools for anyone who has never picked up a leatherworking tool before. Here, specialist techniques including leather decoration are all covered. They also run classes on how to make a traditional English briefcase and men’s leather goods for those who have completed a course with them before.

“All novices want to leave with a finished piece but I always say to them, ‘it’s not about necessarily finishing something but it’s the skills you are taking away with you that count,'” says Valerie. That said, Valerie is also strict when she needs to be. “When I’m teaching students the basic techniques, I don’t take any prisoners really. I am very particular about how they do the hand stitching – there is a sequence which if you follow, will get you good results – so I say to them ‘Leave here and go away you can do it however you want but while you are here you have to follow my way because I know you will get good results.”

And as Neil notes, teaching is all about giving. “We never hold any helpful industry information back from our students. Why would we?” Indeed, all students are provided with a list of tried and tested suppliers and can even tag an order onto one of Valerie’s and Neil’s, at no extra cost.

Says Valerie: “Knowledge is not an intellectual thing. Knowledge is the whole of us. There’s knowledge in our hands and in our experience and this is what we are passing onto others in a continuous loop. We learnt how to stitch from the local saddle maker, who learnt from his father who learnt from his father, so we are both the result of all those people. We take knowledge, make it our own and grow it. It’s almost a genetic thing.”

Yusuf Osman, is among the duo’s glittering alumni. Today, the maker, and now teacher, has his own leather brand and also hosts workshops in a space at London’s Cockpit Studios for aspiring leathermakers. Before attending his first leatherworking course with Valerie and Neil in November 2014, he was on track to be a lawyer, having moved from Leicester to enrol at the London School of Economics.

“Leatherworking was not an accessible craft when I started almost a decade ago and teaching was not readily available,” says Yusuf. “Like so many, I had purchased Valerie’s book, but it was years later and only after I qualified as a solicitor that I enquired about attending a course. It was my luck that a spot was available due to a cancellation. It was a weekend course in Tetbury that was my first introduction to working with leather.”

Indeed, some ten years on, Yusuf remains more committed and passionate about leather and craftsmanship than ever. His one-day private classes and online or business coaching and training bundles are tailored to suit all levels. In his Leatherworking with a Master Craftsman workshops to a maximum of four students, he gives an overview of the history of leather use and tanning along with modern methods and innovations in the leather industry. He also highlights the importance of craft as a defining feature of human civilisation and the importance of putting craft back into all aspects of our lives as individuals and as a society.

“I did not envisage teaching the craft, but I started in 2018 because of enquiries from eager students due to the lack of teaching available – initially on a one-to-one basis and later at a secondary school. When I started as a full-time leather craftsman a year later, I started with regular workshops in my studio that were an instant hit. Within a few months, I was teaching students from all over the world, including John Malkovich and other celebrities. Over the years I have taught many hundreds of students and now I also regularly travel abroad to give talks on leather and craftsmanship and to pass on my skills to passionate students everywhere!”

Elsewhere, maverick teaching duo and bespoke shoemakers, James Ducker and Deborah Carré, aka Carréducker, have played a pivotal role for over twenty years in educating those seeking to learn how to make a pair of shoes entirely by hand. The pair met when James was doing an apprenticeship with John Lobb and Deborah was a Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust, QEST, scholar, both training under master shoemaker, Paul Wilson.

“Paul was making for some of the biggest names in handsewn bespoke shoes at the time, so we were very lucky to train with him,” recalls James. “To have someone who was generous enough to share their skills was wonderful. He was a really enthusiastic teacher and also very patient and he made learning enjoyable.”

James who went on to teach the handsewn shoemaking course at Cordwainers College in Hackney, then later when it was taken over by the London College of Fashion at its Golden Lane premises spotted a gap in the market for teaching the intricacies of bespoke shoemaking once the LCF course ended in 2006. “We thought if no one else is doing it, we really should. Without new shoemakers coming into the trade, the craft risked becoming endangered or worse, disappearing completely.”

Deborah takes it from here. “At that point, it was nigh on impossible to see the craft in action, let alone try your hand at it. Entry into the trade was only through apprenticeship and since it’s such a niche trade anyway, opportunities were limited. When we started teaching our 12-day intensive course, we were frowned upon by some members of the industry for demystifying the process and effectively “giving our skills away”. But we felt we had a duty to give others the experience we had been so fortunate to have under Paul’s guidance. In our twenty-odd years, we have proven that you can teach anyone to make shoes; that they can go on to learn with other makers and even make a successful career out of it. And hopefully, we have helped to re energise the industry.”

From their multi-purpose studio space housed in London’s Oxo Tower Wharf building, alongside meeting the footwear needs of a steady stream of bespoke customers, the pair teach students throughout the year on their handsewn shoemaking, pattern-making and leathercraft courses.

Students can join evening, weekend or longer-term courses to learn each of the 200 steps needed to make a pair of handsewn shoes, working with natural oak bark tanned leathers from Devon. They leave with a real sense of pride in knowing that they made their shoes from scratch. Today, Deborah and James also offer Zoom teaching support to students who can’t be there in person.

Both agree that teaching requires patience, expert knowledge of the field, calmness, an ability to communicate well and firmness. “There’s always a lot of enthusiasm from the adults we teach but there’s also a lot of trepidation and fear so we help to give them the confidence when using tools for the first time. The primary tool they use is a sharp knife and the first thing we teach them is how to sharpen the knife and why it’s so important to keep it sharp.”

Says James: “One of the hardest things to teach is that you have to make mistakes to learn. Whilst we will do all we can to ensure that the finished product is secure and wearable and looks lovely, there will be mistakes so when we are teaching, we always work on the left shoe first and then the right shoe. You could argue that the left shoe is not the best-looking because that’s where the mistakes will have happened, whereas the right shoe should be the correct one, the one where that learning has been really taken on.”

“Teaching this age group can be challenging but there was this one girl who said she wanted to do a saddlery course and open her own business. She was only 16 and didn’t come from a family where she was exposed to the idea of being self-employed but had learned from speaking with others that you can design a life around work that you are passionate about. That whole teaching experience made me so happy.”

And when teaching her ‘Introduction to Leathermaking’ to groups of more mature students which she does as part of another community initiative, Acava, she adapts her techniques quickly to suit any limitations.

“You have to be open-minded about a student’s capabilities. Some might not have the hand strength to be able to hammer as powerfully as others so I encourage them to try another technique. Also, you need to understand how to shift your teaching schedule around to allow them more time to stitch. I might even give more peer-to-peer learning so I teach one person and they teach another, as maybe their way of explaining makes more sense to them than mine.”

It’s clear to see how much keeping leather traditions alive means to Candice and other dedicated teacher-makers like her. “In every single project I do there is an element of handwork that can’t be done on a machine,” she says. “Unless a super, high-tech machine can replicate what my hands are doing, then we will always need skilled and experienced teachers to pass their knowledge on. We need to have more of a breadth of difference in our society – that unique, human touch, that only an artisan teacher can provide.”