How it's made - Leather EDC Range
Our much anticipated leather Every-Day-Carry collection. This new EDC range is 100% Irish designed & made, in fact handmade right here in Galway.
We're the only family in Ireland with the surname Leather. It's unique & we've brought this time-honored profession back to life & paid homage to our roots, by combining traditional leatherworking (which has nearly been lost) with modern engraving technology.
It took longer than originally planned, but delighted to say the prototyping is finished & we actually sold out of our first production run, which is a great sign.
Pictured here is the No.4 Urban card wallet. Modern design, simple features, but extremely practical for the person who adores all things minimal (4-5 cards in the internal pocket when broken in). The approach to the design & manufacture of this slim leather card wallet is the same as all the other items in the range. Let's break it down:
- Eco-tanned leather. We've avoided toxic chrome-tanned leathers & instead sourced vegetable-tanned leather from Italy which is much kinder to the environment. It's also full-grain leather, which is the toughest, most beautiful part of the hide. All leather hides are a by-product of the food industry.
- We use modern laser cutting technology to cut all of our patterns, including stitching holes.
- Edges are finished with a black dye & our own natural whiskey scented leather balm applied.
- We use strong braided thread from Denmark, back-stitched on the top & bottom of each row.
- We hand stitch each wallet. We debated over machine sewing which to be honest would be much quicker, but the down side is it’s also much weaker. In the end we opted for the time honoured method of saddle stitching by hand. Slower, but incredibly strong. Let's keep ole-school workmanship & techniques alive!
- The typefaces used in the packaging box have a retro aesthetic, & we've included a black linen pouch for each item.
We are on a continual mission to source a good vegan option as well for leather. For a small maker like ourselves, we've actually spent quite a bit of time & resources on this, but the bottom line is, nothing so far compares in quality or function to natural vegetable-tanned leather. We've tried vegan leather made from pineapple leaves, cactus & fruit. So far no joy, & we're certainly not going to opt for a plastic based alternatives simply to earn a 'vegan' badge. So we'll keep working on it, there are potential options made from mycelium (mushroom), but none of these products are commercially available yet (or are being controlled by big international companies). The leather we use is a by-product of the food industry & is responsibly sourced.
Natural full-grain leather is a wonderful material to work with & what we love about it, is it's ability to look better over time & patina with age as it picks up all the scuffs & scratches of your adventures. These wonderful little wallets will last a long time with some maintenance & care, which is quite different to the fast-fashion produced plastic leather wallets that fall apart in no time.