Amalfi

Marco,

I don’t know if you’ll read this. Your mother says you’re busy. I believe her.

I want to tell you some things about the leather before I forget them, or before there’s no one left to tell.

The cowhide we use comes from the tanneries in the valley. You’ve been there — the smell hits you before you see the building. That smell is tannin, which comes from tree bark, mostly chestnut. The hides soak for months. The longer they soak, the denser the leather. Cheap leather is rushed. You can tell by pressing your thumbnail into it: good leather springs back slowly, like it’s thinking about it. Bad leather springs back immediately, like it doesn’t care.

The sea air here does something to leather that I’ve never been able to explain properly. It softens it differently than oil does. Oil makes leather supple from the outside in. The sea air works from the inside out — something about the salt and the humidity together. A bag made here and kept here will age differently than the same bag kept in Milan. I don’t know if that’s worth anything to you. It was worth something to me.

The stitching is the part that takes longest to learn. Not the technique — the technique you can learn in a week. What takes years is knowing how tight is tight enough. Too loose and the seam opens in five years. Too tight and the thread cuts into the leather and it fails in three. There’s a tension that’s correct, and it lives in your hands, not in any measurement. I tried to write it down once. I couldn’t.

The workshop will close at the end of the year. There’s no one to leave it to who wants it. That’s not a complaint — I understand. The world is different now. I just wanted you to know these things existed, and that someone knew them.

Your father