The Skins
What we buy, why we reject most of it, and how each one behaves after ten years of being carried.
01 — OSTRICH
The quill field, read across a room.
Ostrich is graded on the crown — the dense field of raised follicles across the back of the bird. Full-quill means we cut the panel from that crown and nowhere else, which uses more hide than any other way of laying a pattern. It is also the only reason ostrich looks like ostrich.
02 — CROCODILE
Belly scale, centred by hand.
Nile crocodile, farm-sourced and CITES-documented. The value sits in the belly: small, even, regular scales running down a centre line. We centre that line on the front panel, which means front and back come from opposite ends of one skin. Papers travel with the finished piece.
03 — NGUNI
Every hide a different animal.
Nguni cattle carry their own map. We cut to the markings rather than against them, so no two pieces match and none of them are meant to. Before we cut, you get a photograph of the actual hide. Hair-on panels are sealed at the edge so they hold.
04 — SPRINGBOK
Light, marked, unmistakably here.
The lightest hide in the house and the most local. Springbok takes trim work, linings and small goods better than it takes a full panel, so we use it where the marking can be read at close range: wallets, pouches, the flap of a satchel.
05 — ZEBRA
One stripe field, cut once.
Zebra is used sparingly and on commission only. A stripe field cannot be matched across a seam, so a zebra piece is designed around a single uninterrupted panel. Sourced under permit, documented, and never dyed over.
Sourcing
Every exotic hide that enters the workshop arrives with its documentation, and every crocodile and zebra piece leaves with it. We buy from South African tanneries we have used for years. If a hide cannot be accounted for, we do not take it — not on price, not on colour, not on a deadline.
Beyond the five above, the house also works lizard, elephant and snake — on commission only, quoted with the permits that go with them.
