We LOVE Hand Tooled Leather
Our hand tooled leather wallets, leather bags and leather accessories are some of our most popular products. And because our customers love our hand tooled leather items so much, we wanted to share a little bit of an insight into what goes into the making of these beautiful and unique items.
Hand tooled leather is an artistic tradition of many nations. People have been working with leather for many centuries, as archaeological evidence and paintings depict. It's likely that the idea of decorating leather emerged around the same time that people figured out how to cure skins. Artistic expression through leather decoration is clearly documented in many cultures.
Mahiya specifically selected Bali and the extremely talented Balinese leather-smiths to create our beautiful hand tooled leather bags, boho wallets and footwear. We fell in love with the excellent craftsmanship, love and attention-to-detail that goes into this fine art, and specifically the Balinese unique hand tooling style. There are not too many leather-smiths around these days who have mastered the fine art of leather hand tooling, and this helps to keep our products exclusive and unique. You'll find subtle differences in each hand tooled product, depending on the particular style of each crafts-person and due to the individual nature of the hand construction. Each piece takes many, many hours to create and a lot of work goes into forming each master piece!
When we visit our crafts people we are always fascinated with their cluttered workshops, vast array of specialised tools, and the ease at which they create the beautiful designs - mandala designs, flora inspired designs and other boho style designs all come to life in this hive of creativity. Only the finest leather is selected, cured with vegetable tan to form the perfect base, then intricately hammered and tooled with what are quite possibly antique status traditional tools. It really is a beautiful site to behold, and wonderful atmosphere to be within.
