Craft Week 2026: Bloom, and What It Means for Leather

Craft Week is now in its fourth year. We have participated since the beginning, and each year the conversation has shifted. In the first year, it was enough simply to demonstrate — to show people that leather goods were made by hand, that this was not automated, that skill was involved. Many visitors were genuinely surprised.

By the third year, the conversation had become more specific. Visitors were asking about particular techniques, about the sourcing of materials, about the economics of craft production. The sophistication of the audience had grown considerably.

This year, we showed something different: failure. We displayed pieces that had been rejected during quality control — not because they were badly made, but because they did not meet our standard. A stitch slightly off-line. A colour match that was close but not exact. Pieces that most customers would never have noticed were wrong, but that our workshop had identified and set aside.

The response was striking. Visitors spent a long time with these pieces, comparing them to the finished versions, trying to see what we had seen. Several said it was the most useful thing they had encountered at the event.

We think there is something important in this: that quality is most clearly understood by looking at what falls short of it. We will probably do something similar next year.