Heidrun is a new goat skin just launched. I’ve been looking for a quality goat skin leather for a little while now, but until now nothing had really inspired me. Of course it had to be vegetable tanned leather, but I was also looking for something with character while at the same time being heavy enough for a tri-fold watch strap.
My straps are “tri-fold”, which simply means the strap is formed from a single strip of leather, with three folds (two in the buckle half and one in the strap tail). This results in the same high quality leather being shown on the inside of the strap as the outside. I refuse to bulk straps with cheap fillers, or use cheaper lining leathers on the inside, and all my straps are hand stitched. All of this makes for a superior watch strap, but it also means that the leathers I use must be a minimum of 1.5mm thick to give the strap sufficient structure to live up to the wear a watch strap will have to take. Most goat skin leather is around 1mm thick only, which is why goat skin has never been available on my website.
That is until now. I’ve come across a supply of thicker (1.5mm) naturally veg tanned goat skin, and it’s beautiful. It’s been dyed a warm brown colour, but the natural texture of the leather is evident and it gives it an almost 3D look. I made the strap photographed from a sample I took away with me, but as soon as I started working with it I knew I wanted to offer it, and my order was placed before I’d finished the strap I was making. My order arrived last week and I’m pleased to say that Heidrun is available now.
So why have you called it Heidrun?
There are a lot of aspects to adding a new leather to my store, and a lot of work that goes into it. Each time I add a leather I need to make a strap that will be photographed, compose a description of the leathers characteristics for the product page, and decide on the pricing, but believe it or not the one thing I struggle with most is coming up with a name for the leather. Sometimes it’s sufficient to simply describe the colour e.g. Cobalt Blue, Lime or Violet, wheras other times when the leather is well-known I’m minded to call it the same as the tannery e.g. Horween Essex or Horween Derby. I did think of calling this leather “Walnut Goat”, because the colour and texture reminds me of a walnut shell, and it’s a goat skin, but I already have a Walnut leather so that seemed like a bad idea. I wanted a name that would refer to the fact it is a goat skin, but it needed to be something special, and in trying to come up with a name I was reminded of a story I had heard. In Norse mythology, Odin has a goat who eats buds from the Lerad tree and produces mead from her teats. Each day she fills a cauldron with this mead, a cauldron so huge that it holds sufficient mead for all in Valhalla to have their fill. The name of the goat is Heidrun.
