A cowhide or sheepskin is a sort of sequins and tiara for your interior - neutral but lively!
eather itself is one of the world's most versatile materials, popping up everywhere from fashion, to interiors, to book binding. It's used to enclose, wrap, protect, carry.
It has all sorts of extraordinary finishes and applications. It was even used when the Clarence Hotel nightclub was redesigned by architect Ross Cahill O'Brien for U2 to provide fire protection and a very sensual finish to the touch on handrails and steelwork.
The interior design world has always loved a good cowhide. It's the maverick of the leather world, with no two the same. Back in 1927, when Swiss architect Le Corbusier collaborated with two furniture designers to design the 'LC4', a chaise longue to you and me, the cowhide on the 'relaxing machine' made quite the stir. As for sheepskin, the Swedes have a tradition of gifting them to line the cots of their newborns, but it was in the 1970s that sheepskin last parachuted into chic interiors, thanks to erotic sci-fi movie Barbarella - and a host of lookalike sheepskin sofas began to appear.
The Irish sheepskin is stepping into the limelight at the moment. Its long luxuriant fleece makes a good counterpoint to the clean lines - and sharp edges - of our ash or oak furniture and the simple styles of the Irish cottage style where they're seen draped over stools, or softening up chairs and floors.
Whether a skin or a hide is good or bad depends to a large extent on the standard of animal husbandry it received which means Ireland has the edge. The same rules seem to apply to hides as to meats - the better the quality of life of the animal, the better the end product.
"The quality of a hide is based on its thickness and appearance," says Derek McCarthy of Irish Hide Designs, who describes himself as 'almost a professor of hides' after decades in the business. "You can also tell if it was well fed, if it's been outdoors in the wind, the rain. It'll have a lovely sheen, it's brighter and more vital looking - it's from a healthy animal. Store-fed cattle, bred indoors, will have rub marks and bald patches and their skins aren't as vibrant. I'd say 99pc of Irish cattle are bred outdoors and so you see it in their hides."
Cheaper hides are likely to have been factory farmed, and can look identical. Take note, bargain hunters.
As for sheepskins, Derek likes to use organic sheep as they have 'unpolluted' skins, though diet has a big role to play here too. "You can tell if a sheep has been fed too much turnip by his yellow wool."
Derek's company goes back five generations to 1810 when it was first established in Cork as a hide, skin, feather and wool merchants. Each generation of McCarthy has re-invented or tweaked the company to survive - in the early part of the 20th Century, world wars and recession hit the business hard and the family fought to survive. Then there was another market shift four or five years ago, Derek tells me. Up to then, he would visit small butchers around the country to select hides or skins but many of those have disappeared. Now he has a single source in Athy where the specific quality and type of hides he likes to work with are put by.
Two years ago, he made the decision to add value to the skins and hides he traded and set up Irish Hide Designs, using skins from cattle or sheep bred along the Wild Atlantic Way, the only guaranteed Irish ones on the market. You can choose cowhide rugs from, say, Donegal or West Kerry cows, or sheepskins that have been finely cropped or left long and shaggy.
He also offers a range of furniture, anything from cushions to yoga mats - Derek handpicks the fleece for these - or shaggy-legged pouffes. Even leather aprons that are made with the help of Limerick saddler, Trevor Russell. Just the sort of thing for Father's Day.
Sunday Indo Business
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