In 2024 I went to the Black Country Canal Festival for the first time. I was trading from the boat, the shop was open and there were people everywhere.
Towards the end of the first day, a man called Bob stopped for a chat. At some point he mentioned that he had some leather sitting in a pile in his workshop and wondered whether I might be able to make use of it.
“Well, I can always make use of leather,” I said.
In my head, I was imagining a carrier bag. Perhaps a few decent-sized offcuts. Something I could tuck under the counter and have a rummage through later.
We swapped numbers, Bob disappeared, and I more or less forgot about it.
The following day he came back.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re here,” he said. “I’ve got the leather. Where do you want me to put it?”
This seemed an unnecessarily complicated question for a carrier bag of scraps.
He suggested I come up to his van and have a look. He had brought a friend with him to help unload it, which should probably have been my first warning.
I followed them up the towpath.
There was not a carrier bag.
There were six or seven enormous pallet-sized bakery trays absolutely full of leather.
A frankly ridiculous amount of leather.
So we started carrying it.
Backwards and forwards we went between Bob’s van and the boats, hauling great trays of leather down the towpath. I sorted it roughly by colour as we went, trying not to think too hard about the fact that I had somehow just acquired what felt like half a tannery.
And then, over the months and years that followed, something rather unexpected happened.
Leather is expensive. If I have bought a beautiful piece of hide, there is always a little voice somewhere in my head reminding me what it cost. Cutting into it to try something completely untested can feel surprisingly difficult. What if the idea doesn’t work? What if I cut it wrongly? What if I completely ruin it?
Bob’s leather removed all of that anxiety.
Because it had been given to me, I have been able to experiment with impunity.
I could cut it, stitch it, punch holes in it, combine colours I wasn’t sure about, try techniques I had never tried before and occasionally make something that was a complete disaster without feeling that I had just destroyed twenty quid’s worth of material.
And because of that, I have made things with Bob’s leather that I’m fairly sure I would never otherwise have attempted.
The pile has dwindled considerably since 2024, but it is still going strong. Whenever I post a project involving it on Instagram or Facebook, I tag it #BobsLeather. (There is another Bob somewhere in the world using the same hashtag, but it is fairly obvious which are my projects!)
I don’t think Bob could possibly have known what he was giving me when he turned up at the Black Country Canal Festival with his van full of leather.
It wasn’t just material.
It was permission to experiment and fail. And, rather wonderfully, the freedom to learn.
Thank you Bob!
