Victoria Baker

The years spent as an independent freelance maker then designer-maker on costumes for theatre & dance in live theatre TV & Film, led her to appreciate form found in certain costume design, and an admiration of classic design. This inspired her to develop early bag designs, realizing initially in a unique laminated Irish linen. Through experiments she found she could dye the linen and apply suede shapes to it and suddenly found an affinity for working with leather. By 2010, as she acquired more skills, Victoria moves away from textiles developing a range in leather which she has been refining, improving and increasing ever since. Victoria enjoys detail, but her overall aim is to create designs which have longevity and distinctive quality.

The general process uses traditional leather working techniques: once the leather is selected, Victoria cuts by hand, to her patterns, and chooses appropriate, colourful suede linings, added to contrast with or complement the leather. Where appropriate, Victoria skives, glues and then hand stitches with a saddlery stitch, in the final process of completing the bag, edges are bevelled, burnished, polished and finally the chosen metalware is added. Victoria considers and designs each bag on an individual basis.