What Should a Good Bag look like?
• It should have good all round thickness with no extremes of thickness. • Stitching approximately 4 to the inch in sheepskin and 4 to 5 in cowhide. Each bag will not is exactly the same and it is up to the bagmakers judgement and feel as to what is best. The stitching must be straight. • Avoid skins which are very poorly marked on the out side although some natural flesh marks are possible. • The important part is the inside of the skin (hair side) and this is where you have to trust that the bagmaker has done a good job and checked it for damage ie pinholes scaring. The skins used go through a very rigorous selection process. The sheep in particular have to be finely graded as size skin and damage make many unusable. Many thousands are sorted to be left with only the best. The type of skin is also important with sheep from Norway, Iceland and Britain all being used. The tanning process is also crucial to the skin. We use alum as a tanning agent for sheep and chrome for the cows. Ther
