A second life

Restoration is not a sideline of this trade, it is how the trade was learned: the maistru came to make things because he spent years repairing what people brought him. An old piece does not put us at a loss. It puts us to work.

Everything starts by reading the pelt. We look for the bald or thinning patches the trade calls chelituri, left where the hide was not salted in time and the hair falls out, and for the cracks in the skin itself. Whatever will no longer hold a needle we tell you at the outset, because a new seam set into tired skin gives way right beside itself.

Fur is worked from the back, on the skin side: the seam is sewn on the leather with fine thread, and any hairs caught under the stitch are teased out afterwards with a needle. We never cut fur with scissors, only with a knife, because scissors cut the hair fibre and a cut fibre shows in the finished piece. Of a join made properly, the maistru says it plainly: if you brush it a little afterwards, you cannot even tell where it was joined.

The fur machine closes the work. There are two kinds, one for thick material and one for the thin-skinned furs the trade calls game: fox, hare, mink. The maistru is a maintenance mechanic as well, so the workshop's machines are set by the same hand that sews on them.

The workshop's leather clothing began with a repair. A man brought in a coat torn at the pocket. The maistru, who did not yet know how to make a pocket, took that one apart, remade it, and only then knew how to cut one from scratch. A lapel came next. What he could not make, he learned by repairing, and repair has stayed at the centre of the workshop ever since.

We treat leather as a living material: we clean it, restore its suppleness, even out the colour, then redo the seams and replace worn hardware. Recolouring works on pigment-finished leather; aniline, suede and nubuck take colour quite differently, so the test is done on a hidden area first and only then on the whole piece.

We also tell you what cannot be done: a deep crack is improved, not erased. The workshop's leather goods began with a request too. At an event someone asked the maistru for a belt, then for a chimir, the wide traditional belt, and from there the challenge stayed: to make a good one for the person who will wear it.

The workshop's fascia says "Vopsim haine din piele", we dye leather clothing, and it has said so for a long time. The colour of a leather jacket or coat goes first at the elbows, the collar and the pockets, exactly where the leather is rubbed every day. The piece looks tired well before it actually is.

We clean and feed the leather first, because dye will not settle on skin that is dry or loaded with wax. Pigment-finished leather takes colour differently from aniline, suede or nubuck, so the test is done on a hidden area and only then on the whole piece. Where the leather is cracked right through, colour evens out the look but does not fill the crack, and we say so before the work, not after.

We work only on the piece brought to the workshop, once we have seen it on the table. The shade is settled there too, together with you: either as close as possible to the original colour, or a deliberate change, which does not come back.

Made-to-order work was born of a challenge the customers brought: they arrived with all sorts of designs, wanting something other than the classic models. A transformation still begins the same way today, from what you already own and what you would like it to become.

What decides the outcome is not how much material there is, but how much of the skin will still hold a needle. An old, dried-out pelt tears at the seam itself, so the new cut is planned around the sound areas, and whatever cannot come out of the piece we tell you before anything else. Fur we cut with a knife, never scissors, because scissors cut the hair fibre and a cut fibre shows in the finished piece.

A transformation cannot be undone. What has been cut away will not give the old length back, so we show you the proposal on the piece itself and you approve it before the knife goes in. The good material that is left is not lost: the part that is left over is not thrown away, the maistru says, that is the gold of the trade. The sound pieces are picked out, joined and become the lining of a fur hat.