My latest piece folks, It's a facsimile of a a wooden model of geological strata which was made in 1841 by or for Thomas Sopwith and was used for teaching purposes, particularly of engineers and miners. This piece is 3 inches square and consists of different woods, sawn thin, glued together then shaped, cut and polished (the curved coping saw cut of 1.5 inches took two hours!). I was lucky enough to examine an original set of twelve at Killhope North of England Lead Mining Museum and they are works of exemplary craftsmanship and utter, sculptural beauty. This one will be on display at the Sill Landscape Discovery Centre of Hadrian's Wall. More to come! Andy.

Photos from Andy Bates Leatherwork's post

Ok folks, welcome back to my page here, newly reactivated as there are some huge things coming up shortly to do with courses and training which I'm dying to tell you about. More on those in a while. For the moment, a momentous object from the collection at the National Leather Collection in Northampton. The object in the photos below is a leather cup, discovered by Oliver Baker, the author of 'Black Jacks and Leather Bottles' in London in 1867. This is recorded as being found "with other neolithic artefacts". If this is the case, this will be - to my knowledge - the oldest leather object found in the UK, which is just huge. So, we need some dating evidence to prove or disprove this. To this end I've been in communication with Historic England's Scientific Dating team who have been hugely helpful and, depending on what the leather has been treated with since 1867, Carbon 14 dating should be possible! So, I'm now on to tracking down Oliver Baker's journals for details about the object's discovery and conservation and speaking to the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit to get the job done. More soon. :)