Steve is the last craftsperson working in London who makes the specialist knives needed to cut leather. Bobby’s 60-year career in leather cutting has seen him rise from an apprentice at Cordwainers Technical College, to founding his own clicker (leather cutter) business with customers including Clarks and Marks and Spencers. Today, Steve produces the tools Bobby uses to cut the leather that Kate and her in-shop team make into its accessories. Alongside Kate, they told us the story of their craft, the decline of the leather trade in Hackney and the joy they have found whilst working together in recent years.
Steve explained how he started his career as a tool maker 50 years ago. ‘I was working at a shoe company, and they had the knives and one broke, so they asked me to take it to get it repaired. I walked in and the bloke said, would you like a job? I said, yeah, all right. And that’s how I started. Been doing it ever since.’ The colleagues he has met along the way have been the highlight of his career. ‘You get to meet a lot of different people. People like Kate.’ Bobby introduced Steve to Kate many years ago, but their friendship grew during lockdown. Kate tells them, ‘You two were my lockdown treat. We needed help and once you were working with us, there was no going back. Dream team’. I asked Steve about his craft and the changes he has seen in the leather trade. ‘A lot of the big companies are digital and electronic now. What we are doing is more traditional; a lot of it is hand-cut. Before we can make knives, we have to make all the samples, and that’s just hand-cutting around paper patterns. Once you get the patterns right, and you want to go into production, you start getting the knives made, and go from there.’ The knives are an expensive but vital tool in the craft of leatherwork, often used through generations of leather workers. Steve explains ‘I used to work for a chap cutting sandals, and the knives were about sixty years old.’ Steve’s former boss told him ‘‘I remember seeing my Dad use these knives, and I’m still using them now’’. The knives Steve produces are bespoke to each job, although certain parts of a knife can be used in different ways for different leather cuts. ‘There are tricks you can do, you can use a bit of the knife’ Says Kate, before Steve adds ‘You can make another bag using the front of that knife and the back of that one, or a handle. If you look at a pair of shoes, how many parts are there to it? 6 or 7 pieces?’ We used to do 17 different shoe sizes, including the half sizes. Every piece has to be perfect. Otherwise, they don’t go together. So you can imagine the amount of work in it.’
London’s East End has an illustrious history of shoe making and leather working, going back over 750 years. In 1272, the Worshipful Company of Cordwainers, the leather workers guild, were granted their First Ordinances. The Ordinances were clear that Cordwainers had the right to trade in shoes within the city of London, using only the best quality leather. In 1913, the organisation took over the Hackney-based Leather Trades School, establishing Cordwainers Technical College (Now part of the London College of Fashion).
Bobby, just like Kate, learnt his craft at the college. ‘Hackney used to have a lot of shoe factories. Near enough every corner. If you left one job on the Friday night, you could get another job around the corner.’ Times have changed, as today the remaining craftspeople in Hackney have become specialists in their field. Bobby explains ‘Most of the shoes we do now are specialist. Ballet shoes and ballroom dancing shoes, special fashion shoes, that is still being done in the traditional way. But the run of the mill stuff, that is all being done electronically with automatic cutting. Mass production is quicker and easier. I worked recently for a company that does theatrical shoes. I used to have cut them all by hand. That’s why I still have a job that has not been taken over by a machine.’
Bobby’s career has spanned 60 years of working with leather, joining the shoe trade in Hackney when he left school. ‘I was 15, mum said to me one day, you need to get yourself a job. They are advertising for trainees. It’s only a five-minute walk from where we live. Get over there and get yourself a job. If you get in there making shoes, you will have a job for life. Because whatever happens in the world, people will still have shoes on their feet. I am still cutting shoes, she was right’.
Bobby began his apprenticeship by spending one day a week at Cordwainers Technical College (Now part of the London College of Fashion) alongside his new job. Bobby enjoyed being eased into his working life as a craftsman. ‘Having just left school, and starting work, it was good because I used to work Monday and Tuesday, and it was like going back to school on Wednesday, because we used to go to the college. Then a couple of days and you’ve got the weekend again.’ Bobby’s career as a clicker flourished. After redundancy, he founded his own clicker business, which eventually operated 12 clicker presses (the manually operated press used to cut leather). Bobby’s business soon cut leather for customers in Hackney borough and beyond. “Like Kate does, (my customers) give me the knives and the leather, we cut it, and bring it back (ready to be made into a finished product).
As the British leather working market retracted, with clickers leaving the trade or retiring, Bobby’s Hackney-based business grew ‘Word got round, and we worked for everybody- Clarks, Marks and Spencers, all the big places, the little places, where they sold on the market stall and that. Word got round, and we had some of the best clickers’. Bobby’s business produced one of Marks and Spencers staple products- a low heel, comfortable women’s shoe. However, his business began to decline in the late 1980’s after he was informed that the production of the shoe was shifting abroad. Reducing his clicker press number to two, Bobby still uses the same machine to cut leather ‘They’re quite old, but they are still working’.
