News
Country Living Magazine
October 2013 issue, page 41
Country in the City
illustration by Lucinda Rogers
“Can a city dweller enjoy a taste of the good life? Louise Elliott reports from her urban neighbourhood.
THIS MONTH: THE SADDLER
AS I FOLLOWED the path to Mia Sabel’s workshop in the garden of her Walthamstow home, I knew instantly that I was entering true country-in-the-city terrain. Surrounded by trees and backed by a patch of brambly undergrowth, the green-painted log cabin that has served as her studio for the past two years has all the rustic charm of a little house in the woods. Inside, the rafters are hung with an array of old saddles, reins and martingales. The London borough of E17 may not be the most obvious place to encounter a qualified saddler but, having decided to escape the stresses of life as a top designer for a city bank, Mia has spent the past five years mastering a demanding and diminishing craft. “I took redundancy from my job, enrolled on the UK’s only full-time saddlery course at Capel Manor College in Enfield and never looked back,” she says.
As well as repairing old saddles and harnesses, Mia makes bespoke bridlework, often studying the weathered pieces she collects to produce her unique creations. “I financed the first part of the training myself and then was lucky enough to receive a Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST) award to allow me to learn the more advanced skills,” she explains. Today, her leather repertoire also includes beautiful bags, cases, stationery
and accessories (everything from watch fobs to iPhone covers). Each one is crafted in the traditional way but many of the designs have a fresh, contemporary feel, and Mia often incorporates
recycled materials such as striped braces for straps on her covetable notebooks. Everything is made using English leather – some oak-bark pit-tanned in Devon – cut, stitched and polished by Mia with amazing attention to detail.
Knives, cutters, edgers, mallets and awls in all sizes, many sourced from old saddleries, line her workbench, while prized linen threads (increasingly hard to find) are sorted by colour in different drawers. Her most trusted tools include a pair of 180-year-old wooden saddler’s clams made from the cask of a beer barrel, which she uses to hold pieces of leather in place while she works.
Autumn is a busy time as Mia prepares for the Christmas rush but she never sacrifices quality for quantity – every stitch will be smoothed with local beeswax to straighten the thread, every
edge is hand-burnished with cow bone to polish it and make it water resistant. Mia’s flair for design and meticulousness have brought her a growing band of followers (many visit the pop-up shop she holds every Saturday, where they can drop off repairs and pick up orders) and a stream of interesting commissions. It seems entirely fitting that the Friends of the William Morris Gallery (WM was another Walthamstow resident) have asked her to recreate the great man’s original satchel. A testament to her skill of combining beauty and utility.
Mia Sabel (07765 253811; sabelsaddlery.co.uk). Information about the Saturday pop-up shop can be found on her website.”
