Messenger and Business Bags

These leather messenger & business bags are designed for the discerning, practical and style conscious business user and are handmade in best English saddlery leathers to a standard which will take all you can throw at it for many years. (The first one I made is still going strong after fifteen years)

We use J & E Sedgwick bridle leather, Pittards ‘Cruiser’ saddle hide and luxurious pigskin suede for the straps, body panels and linings with bridle leather being hand stitched at the stress points to stop straps failing over time. Solid brass fittings from foundries in the Midlands are carefully selected to ensure strength and style.

Making these messenger and business bags to withstand hard daily use requires all the skills of the leather goods trade as well as skills from the saddlery trade. Full grain saddle hide is carefully selected for its quality, finish and colour consistency before being ‘clicked’ (hand cut with a clicking knife) using paper patterns.

These are carefully arranged to ensure the best parts of the hide are utilised in the areas taking the most wear and stress, to maximise the cutting area, and also to give best colour and grain matching.

Once cut they are hand guided on the skiving machine which pairs down the edges to give neatness to the folds and turnovers in the leather bag. Without this the leather bag will look bulky, cumbersome and thrown together. The same principles are applied to cutting of the bridle leather for strap ends, chapes and closures which when cut will undergo several saddlery hand processes when creasing, edge shaving, staining, polishing, sealing, hole punching, stitch marking are carried out ready for assembly.

Linings in pigskin suede are equally hand prepared along with interlinings and stiffeners to give shape and added strength where needed. Assembling by hand is a testing and complicated series of procedures coupled with hand operated machine stitching for the numerous seams before the bridle leather pieces are hand stitched in their respective places. Then the final ‘closing’ of the messenger and business bag can be completed giving us the finished items which will now need it’s strap attaching.

Close inspection of all stitching, seams and edges is carried out to guarantee a leather messenger bag or leather business bag of distinction, that is released to its intended customer for a long life of hard work, lasting pleasure and enduring looks.