Over the last few years, hide has become one of the central threads running through my work.
The interest itself isn’t new. I’ve always been drawn to the things that remain after a life has ended. As I’ve written about before, my years living in France gave me my first opportunity to explore that curiosity through hide.
In the years since, particularly through Woodland Ways, I’ve had the opportunity to explore the subject much more deeply. I’ve worked with hair-on hides, rawhide, buckskin and both vegetable and K-tans, using skins from a range of different animals. Each process has revealed a different side of the material and, rather than feeling that the picture is becoming clearer, the more time I spend working with hide, the more questions seem to appear.
The hides I’ve prepared have become drums, rattles, ceremonial wall hangings, Heathen Wheels and clothing, all finding their place within my work at The Red Tent. Every project asks something different of the material and every process reveals something new. Rawhide continues to amaze me with its strength. Hair-on hides preserve the individuality of the animal in a way that I find endlessly compelling. Every scar, every healed injury, the changing coat and the unique spots on a fallow deer; preparing a hide teaches you to notice details that would otherwise pass unseen.
Fig. 1 and 2. A mature muntjac buck that died following injuries sustained during territorial fighting. His skin is currently undergoing vegetable tanning as part of this continuing exploration of traditional hidework.
The subject feels almost inexhaustible and there are still whole areas of hidework that I have yet to explore. Parchment is one of them. As somebody who has always loved drawing, painting and writing, I keep returning to the thought that animal skin has carried illuminated manuscripts, maps, music and works of art for centuries. The same material can become clothing, a drum or the surface upon which knowledge is preserved.
A few months ago I was exploring a small area of woodland not far from home in Derbyshire where, years ago, people had thrown household rubbish over the bank. After heavy rain, old medicine bottles, beer bottles and fragments of everyday life still appear through the soil. Judging by the objects that emerge, I imagine the last things were probably thrown there sometime during the 1960s. Amongst these relics I’ve also found pieces of leather shoes.
What caught my attention was how recognisable they still were. One fragment was unmistakably the sole of a shoe and, given its age, was likely to have been vegetable tanned, as many quality leather soles still were. Decades beneath the woodland floor had softened and darkened it, but there was never any doubt what it had once been.
It is easy to forget that, before plastics and synthetic textiles, leather was an everyday material, yet here it was, still recognisable after decades beneath the soil. The more I learnt about hide and leather, the more remarkable that fragment seemed.
Recently I have been reflecting on that piece of leather after reading 'Craftland' by James Fox. One of the book’s central ideas is the relationship between craft and place. It prompted me to look at Derbyshire through the same lens.
Fig. 3. Historic Ordnance Survey map of Bakewell with highlight showing the former tannery complex on Matlock Street. Drawing upon local livestock, oak bark and the River Wye, it formed the centre of Bakewell’s leather industry during the nineteenth century.
Ancient monuments sit alongside working farms. Dry stone walls continue to shape the hillsides. Green woodworking, dry stone walling and shepherding remain part of Derbyshire’s identity, and there is an extraordinary community of craftspeople here working with wood, wool, stone, clay and metal.
As I began looking further into the county’s history, the importance of leather became quickly apparent. Tanneries were once scattered throughout Derbyshire, drawing upon local livestock, oak woodland and running water to supply nearby communities with leather for boots, harnesses, saddlery, bookbinding and countless everyday objects.
Mid-nineteenth-century census returns and trade directories suggest that in the village of Bakewell alone, leather trade supported around fifteen to twenty shoemakers and cordwainers, alongside saddlers and harness makers. Leather was not simply a material, but the foundation of an interconnected community of rural trades.
For centuries, tanning was woven into rural life. Oak bark, rich in tannins, was peeled, dried and ground before being used to transform raw hides into leather, a process that took many months but produced a remarkably durable material. Hides travelled only short distances. The bark came from nearby woodland. The finished leather often remained within the same local economy before, eventually, returning to the land from which it had come.
Industrialisation gradually changed that relationship. Chrome tanning reduced a process that had taken months to one that could be completed in days. Leather became cheaper and faster to produce, while hides and finished products travelled further and further from the landscapes that had once supplied them. As manufacturing became increasingly global, many British tanneries closed, unable to compete with lower production costs overseas. Today, although a handful of exceptional traditional tanneries remain, much of the leather used in Britain has travelled thousands of miles before it reaches our hands.
Yet Derbyshire itself has changed remarkably little. Sheep still graze the hillsides. Britain’s deer population is larger than it has been for centuries. Oak woodland still covers many of the valleys. The raw materials remain remarkably familiar.
Leather hasn’t disappeared. What has changed is its relationship with the landscape that once sustained it.
I still find that difficult to reconcile.
Preparing a hide over weeks or months changes the way you look at it. The finished material still carries the life of the animal that provided it, whether in the pattern of a fallow deer’s spots, a coat that speaks of the harshness or abundance of a season, an old scar from sparring or barbed wire, or the entry and exit wounds of a bullet. Those details are noticed, worked around and, inevitably, reflected upon throughout the process.
Fig. 4. Fleshing a hide using hand tools before tanning
Naturally tanned leather leaves nowhere to hide. Every mark remains part of its history.
That same way of thinking runs through the rest of my work. I am drawn to materials whose stories I understand because I have gathered, prepared or made them myself. Wherever possible, I want the things I create to belong to the landscapes they came from and, one day, to return to them without harm. The same questions continue to guide me. Where did this material come from? What story does it carry? What responsibility do I have towards it?
The more I have learnt about traditional hidework, the more I have come to see it as a meeting place. It brings together woodland management, farming, wildlife, chemistry, history, archaeology and art, but it also brings people together. A locally tanned hide depends upon relationships with farmers, stalkers, woodland owners and craftspeople. The knowledge doesn’t just sit with one person; it is held within the fabric of a community. The finished material can then remain within that same community, becoming objects that are used, repaired and, eventually, returned to the landscape from which they came.
Fig. 5 A red deer rawhide drum, made in Derbyshire.
Perhaps that is what feels most relevant today. The raw materials are still here.. The skills are still here, although increasingly uncommon. The limiting factor isn’t the availability of materials but the willingness to give them time. Working this way is rarely the quickest option and almost never the cheapest when measured in hours alone. Yet those hours create understanding, strengthen relationships with place and produce objects whose origins remain stoically visible.
I want to continue exploring hide because it remains one of the most remarkable materials we have learnt to work with.
Fig. 6. One of a series of ceremonial wall hangings exploring the relationship between hide, landscape and ritual.
Every process reveals another possibility, every finished piece carries the memory of the animal that made it possible, and every object offers another opportunity to reconnect people with the landscapes and materials that surround them. If 'Craftland' asks what our traditional crafts can still offer us, I think hidework provides a compelling answer.
Perhaps the most progressive thing we can do is rediscover a slower way of making and, with it, a more sacred relationship with the materials, the places and one another.
