The Leathersellers' Hall

Home to the Worshipful Company of Leathersellers; an ancient Livery Company of the City of London, the new Leathersellers’ Hall designed by Eric Parry Architects balances contemporary architectural invention with traditional craft techniques.

We worked closely with Parry to develop and create several prominent interior architectural features, that reference the history of the Leathersellers’ trade.

Dropping down the length of the central staircase atrium, the walls are clad using a shrunken bull shoulder with a two-tone effect to match the vitreous enamel on the building’s exterior. Developed specially for this project, the leather has been dyed through, pigmented and then sanded back. All panels are plain butted with special care taken to the detail of the vitrines around the wall. A corridor lined with pale green and maroon leather-clad panels with gold foiling details leads to the library. Some of these were original pieces from the 1950’s, that were cleaned and restored by our team, whilst others are new; meaning we had to recreate and perfectly match the original leather. The Inglenook is a waiting area in the ground floor lobby area. Here we had the unusual opportunity to use completely aniline dyed vegetable-tanned whole hides to create a unique piece of furniture. Entirely stitched by hand, the Inglenook’s construction makes use of historic saddlery techniques.

Several benches in the same vegetable-tanned leather have a contemporary form designed by Parry, but use pinched and handstitched techniques more commonly seen in traditional briefcase construction.