News
THE GUARDIAN
27 April 2010
‘Riding to the rescue’, The Guardian,
Education Supplement p5
Saddlery course revives leather skills,
John Stevens
Hammering nails into a saddle in a rural
workshop is far removed from Mia Sabel's
previous career.
Sabel, 42, was working for a financial
services company in Canary Wharf in
London when she got the itch to reconnect with traditional craftsmanship and the desire to start making things. "I wanted more hands-on skills," she recalls. "I wanted to get away from the office and have a bit of a life change."
She enrolled on the country's only full-time saddlery course and is now hoping to apply the traditional English leathercraft skills that she is learning to the world of luxury goods. "My grandfather was a master carpenter and I think it's a nod to him. I want to use the authenticity of the craft and skills and team it with my marketing experience to start making luxury high-end goods."
Now in her second year of the course at Capel Manor College in Enfield, north London, Sabel has set up her own business and is starting to get commissions to make bespoke leather stationery, attaché cases, fashion accessories and furniture. "The beautiful techniques I am learning by making tack and saddles can be applied to so many things," she says.
"A chief executive approached me wanting to replace a document holder he had owned for 30 years. I could apply my traditional skills to make the holder to his own requirements, even using the lock from his father's old case. I am starting to approach people such as Vogue with the bags I am making."
This increasing desire to learn traditional skills is helping to sustain the craft of leatherwork, which has been hit by the challenge from cheap imports. Walsall, once the greatest centre of leather goods and saddlery trades in Europe, has seen a massive decline in the industry and is now having to concentrate on bespoke manufacturing.
Sabel is just one of a group of students who have come to the college to learn the saddlery trade and apply them elsewhere. Capel Manor College recruits students from across the globe desperate to learn traditional craft skills.
Line Hansen, the course co-ordinator, says: "They come from all over the world: Sweden, Hungary, Japan. People realise they need the skills to work with leather and somehow they find me.
"It seems that other courses went more to the design side and left the skills behind. I suppose it went out of fashion, and then people realised that no one had the old skills. People are waking up to what they need."
After two years, students qualify with the City & Guilds level 3 advanced certificate in saddlery and the prestigious Cordwainers' saddlery diploma.
"Everyone learns the same curriculum, but we teach transferable skills. In the first year we teach how to make a basic saddle, and then build the student portfolio using industry-based skills tests. In the second year students learn the more advanced skills, hand-stitching, making more modern saddles and how to fit them on a horse.
"The skills of cutting, edging, staining, stitching and braiding are hands-on skills you cannot get anywhere else. Once you can make, you can design. If you know how to craft the leather, you understand the limits and possibilities of the skills."
Koichi Sasaki was working for his grandfather's luggage company in Japan when he decided to move to England to enrol on the course. "On a visit to Hermès in Paris I saw the saddlery skills being used by the craftsman," he says. "I wanted to learn how to do it. In Japan, horseriding is not common so there is nowhere to learn about leather. I want to take these skills back to Japan and teach them to the next generation."
One of the course's most successful graduates, fashion designer Mary Wing To, says the techniques she learned at Capel Manor have given her the crucial skills and confidence needed to push the boundaries of design. "You can only be creative, break barriers and be inventive if you know the depths of a craft.
Wing To was first introduced to saddlery when she wanted to incorporate equine elements into a collection she was making for her master's course at the London College of Fashion. "Much of my work was inspired by equine [equipment] and horses and designed in leather, but I could not make it," she says. "Capel Manor agreed to help me and I was mesmerised by the skill and creativity involved."
The pieces in her collections include a jacket made from a saddle inside out and a dress made from plaited human hair. She now works part-time for RBJ Simpson, making luxury leather box cases for global brands such as Polo Ralph Lauren and Asprey, alongside work experience at the Royal Mews, the Queen's tack and harness maker.
"It is a privilege to carry on training and still have that connection with saddlery," she says. "Making tack is such a precise process. It is a great source of inspiration, when I am doing it I am inspired to make handbags.
"The people I am working with are mostly older, they want to pass the skills on to me as they don't want them to be lost."
The course has always been an unusual bridge between the very different worlds of traditional craftsmanship and fashion. It was originally taught at Cordwainers College, in Hackney, east London, where designer shoemakers Jimmy Choo and Patrick Cox learned their trade.
Capel Manor's head of college, Madeline Hall, explains: "Ten years ago Cordwainers closed, the fashion part went to the London College of Fashion and the saddlery came up here to Enfield because of the horses on the site.
"Cordwainers had a mammoth reputation and waiting lists as long as four years for some courses. The course we run now only has 13 places and we continue to be over-subscribed."
Entrants for the course, which has annual tuition fees of £1,097, are expected to have four GCSEs including an art or craft subject, a BTec first diploma or relevant experience. They are selected at interview.
The traditional livery companies continue to support the course both financially and beyond. The Worshipful Companies of cordwainers, curriers, loriners and saddlers all have representatives on the course advisory board, alongside the Society of Master Saddlers.
Despite livery being historically a predominantly male industry, 85% of the saddlery students at Capel Manor are female. "Women are attracted by the possibilities of the craft," says Hall. "Girls who come from horse backgrounds see it as a way of carrying on working with horses, while lots of individuals see it as a way of marrying craft and design.
"Saddlery is not just heritage and we are not just guardians of a museum piece. People are increasingly seeing that traditional skills are the building block for new and cutting-edge design."
Mia Sabel wanted to get out of the office and have a 'life change'. Photograph: Graham Turner
