About Hide and Horn
Welcome to Hide & Horn, I am Peter Hodgson, a local man born in Crosthwaite and raised in these parts. From school, I went to work for a horse clothing manufacturer in Kendal that led to five fascinating years at the Horn Works and over four years with the respected Todd’s Saddlers. The experience, expertise and craft skills I learnt through these years now serves me well at my craft workshop here in Ambleside.
It is an honour to work with materials like leather and horn and to create durable, beautiful objects that will serve well for many years. I realise that the crafts I work with are a dying trade and look forward to sharing them with you. Please do feel free to contact me or simply call in.
Aside from the work with leather, the repairs of bags, jackets and other goods, I also supply items for pets and saddler. But it seems that it is the work with horn that most fascinates visitors; it is rare now to find people working with this particular material and visitors are always surprised by its versatility.
Horn work is one of the oldest crafts in the world; primitive man made drinking cups from it. With horn, unlike plastic, about 20% of each piece is lost due to cracking and general damage in the raw material. From horn, I and others who share my craft, fashion by hand, articles of beauty for use all over the world.
A wonderful gift of nature, horn, man’s first plastic, is found adorning the heads of cattle and other beasts, protecting the tortoise, at finger ends, hooves, birds’ feathers and even hair are of the same substance, Cowhorn, split in two, heated and flattened is made into spoons, combs, brooches etc., all with care and all usable. Each item is handled from five to 10 times in the making of it.
Horn has unique qualities. It is extremely strong and durable; a piece buried in the ground takes 14 years to disintegrate. With heat, it can be easily bent and shaped and retains a permanent polish, hence its wide range of uses. It does not carry flavour, is unaffected by oil and mild acids like vinegar (salad servers, spoons), is not tarnished by egg and may be washed in lukewarm water (NO detergents). When pressed out thinly, horn becomes beautifully translucent and before the invention of glass, was used in windows.
The craftsmen of Cumbria, the people who work with their hands to produce things of beauty, are a dwindling band in these days of computers and automation, but I will work on in this until I can’t.
Hide & Horn. Copyright Website Grants.com Design and hosted by Tourist Information Centres