The National Leather Collection

I‘m honoured that an example of my work - the New Pepys Wallet - has been selected for addition to the National Leather Collection. The Museum Committee recently voted to acquire the piece which will soon be added to the Waterer-Spiers Collection, a subset of the archive which celebrates contemporary craftsmanship and design in leather.

It feels especially meaningful that the piece they selected was designed after a historic item already in the Collection - a wallet crafted for the statesman and diarist Samuel Pepys in the year 1687. My new rendition paid homage and updated the original, a contemporary echo three hundred years later. After the wallet goes through the necessary conservation processes my version will sit side-by-side with the original which inspired it.

The National Leather Collection was set up in 1946 under its original name - The Museum of Leather Craft - by Mr John Waterer. Since the early days its role has been to collect special items of leather from around the world, preserving them for future generations. The Collection comprises an archive of historic, unusual and important objects of leather, including everything from neolithic hide bowls, royal treasure chests and fragments of the dead-sea scrolls.

I’m humbled to have an example of my work included in this incredible archive.