Two hands hand-stitch a piece of brown leather, pulling the thread taut; an awl and a coil of leather cord lie on the bench.

Handmade objects and craftsmanship

Leathercraft

Florentine leathercraft is one of those excellences the world associates with the name of the city long before it knows how the work is done. It is an ancient art that has taken on a modern face without ever giving up the cutting bench, the linen twine, the waxed thread, the smell of leather just finished. Anyone stepping into a Florentine leather workshop understands it from the light — steady, warm, a studio light — and from the industrious silence of someone stitching a saddle, a bag, a wallet by hand.

An open doorway reveals a leather workshop; at the end of the alley stands a church front banded in white and green marble.

Where

Where it is practised in Tuscany

The hands that practise it in Tuscany have their historic centre in Firenze, and in particular in the triangle running from Santa Croce out to Scandicci and Pontassieve. The Scuola del Cuoio, founded in the Franciscan cloister of Santa Croce after the war to teach the craft to the orphaned children of the fallen, is still an international reference point for technical training. Around Firenze the industrial district extends to Scandicci, Bagno a Ripoli, Pontassieve: this is where the workshops that produce for the great Italian and French luxury brands are based, and it is here that Tuscan leathercraft turns over staggering figures while remaining, for most of those involved, on the scale of a single workshop. Then there is Pisa, with a less celebrated but living tradition, and traces of leather working in the areas of Santa Croce sull'Arno and Ponte a Egola — the tanning district that supplies the raw material to the whole chain.

A roll of leather beside a half-moon knife, an awl, a hammer, a pricking iron and a spool of twine on the workbench.

How

The techniques of the craft

The techniques of the craft speak a precise language. Clicking is the cutting of the hide with shears or mechanical presses according to the patterns; skiving thins the edges so that they can be stitched without coarse bulk; edge finishing completes the cuts with specific dyes; saddle stitching is worked with two needles and waxed linen thread, the most durable and the most recognisable, because the thread passes back and forth through the hole leaving a tight, symmetrical stitch. Every bag of fine leathercraft begins from a form in card or wood that is a small piece of architectural design. Leather is chosen by origin, by tanning (vegetable, chrome, mixed) and by grain — the outer surface that tells the quality of the hide.

Coloured hides hang from a rail, a craftsman works at the bench behind, and a leather bag with twine and tools sits in the foreground.

Now

The craft today

Doing it today means living inside a contradiction. On one side Florentine leathercraft lives off global luxury, and demand for certified artisan work has never been so high. On the other, keeping an independent workshop going is harder and harder: the great brands absorb skilled workers and production capacity, and the price of good leather has risen steeply. The workshops that hold on do so by combining their own production, subcontracted work and the training of apprentices — because without the twenty-year-olds learning today, in ten years there will be no hands left.

The producers of this craft

No producer of this craft has yet joined the MANUARTI network. This list opens when the first one does.

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