an old building used for a leather museum was perfect..wont be the same if they move to a newer building...ive read what has been written and i cant quite work out if it is the intention to demolish the old leather museum building unless i have missed something..nice photos mike
Lyn
I saw quite a lot of a small Walsall leather business in the 1950s as a teenager, one which had been established in the 19th century, in purpose built premises just like the one occupied much later by the Museum. Its original product range was essentially bridlery and saddlery but by the time I became acquainted with it it that side of it had long since diminished to bespoke straps for a myriad of purposes (such as those which attached the coach-built body of the upmarket Marmet prams of the time to the great curved springs which were part of their chassis; and items required by the Birmingham gun-trade); and fancy goods like ladies belts, document and writing cases and the like. All supported by similar small manufacturers throughout Walsall who produced buckles, studs, rivets, locks and other items of metalware; and of course the tanneries from further afield, supplying the leather itself, in great rough-edged sheets of various sizes and in a variety of colours to match the ladies' tastes of the time. The workshops were medium sized rooms - not all used by then - with the skilled leatherworkers sitting on tall stools, intent on the cutting and forming and hand-sewing on the long benches in front of them. Almost all of the lived within a few hundred yards of their place of work and in some cases might even have been second or third generation, all devoting their lives to the creation of hand-made products which themselves would sometimes last a lifetime. I still have a few of them myself, all clocking up an age, now, of nearly three-quarters of a century.
I visited the Museum quite few years ago in order to donate a few hand tools retained for the rest of his life by my father-in-law and passed down to my own family - in particular the distinctive skiving knives, those half-moon shaped cutting tools used by every leather worker and probably still used, in modern guise, today. I have only related the above memories which I retain because that visit brought the whole atmosphere of the factory I knew back to life for me, the old, dusty workshops, the skilled men bent over their work, the occasional chatter or laughter, the pervading smell of leather, the working owners always referred to as Mr. Edwin or Mr. Claude or Miss Muriel....... It seemed to me that the Museum was just so "right" as it was (and, at the moment, still is, I assume). I hope that it can remain the same in the future. New premises will never replicate the sort of feeling the current Museum gave me.
(Not exactly the same thing, I know - but the Birmingham experience of Science Museum and Think Tank springs to mind for me. I think they call it "Progress").
Chris
