Handcrafted leather goods: handmade wallets with a unique design
"Hi! My name is Gianluca Sordi. I couldn't find anything I really liked, so I made my own wallet. Today I design and make leather goods for people who think the way I do."
Discover my small handcrafted leather workshop
Why I started this leather workshop
I was looking for a handmade leather wallet that I genuinely liked, but in everything I came across, there was always something I disagreed with. That gap led me to create my first truly unique piece.
While making that wallet, I discovered my passion for leather and for authentic craftsmanship, along with an unexpected talent for this craft.
A family tradition: 25 years of travel bags
.oOo.
My experience goes back to a family business that spent more than 25 years producing travel bags for a well-known Italian airline. A workshop filled with prototypes, durability tests, reinforced stitching and materials designed to survive - among other things - conveyor belts, transfers and impacts.
I grew up playing beside those workbenches, watching how an object is designed when it must never let down the person using it and learning what it means to work with method and respect.
Every mistake became a lesson: there, I learned that true "quality" is the sum of a thousand decisions that remain invisible to the end user.
It gave me a solid foundation for my own approach to handcrafted leatherwork.
My process: design comes first
Whenever I start a new piece, I always begin with the shape I want to achieve, the materials I intend to use and the feeling I want it to convey.
I design the object while imagining it already finished: proportions, lines, closures, and that medieval character that is so fundamental to my work.
Although I love sewing machines and consider them true jewels of pure mechanical engineering, I choose to sew every one of my creations entirely by hand, using the saddle stitch technique.
Leather as a living material
I chose leather because I want to create objects that speak through touch, scent and the passing of time: companions you carry in your pocket, see and touch dozens of times a day, that bring pleasure in use and are capable of changing along with you.
Leather is a living material. It softens, develops a sheen where it is touched most often, and preserves the marks of time and use.
My work is to give it a shape and structure that allow it to age gracefully, becoming part of your life as you carry it every day.
From a small leather workshop to Master Instructor
This relationship with leather has taken me beyond my own workshop.
Thanks to the experience and skills I have developed over the years, I was invited to become Master Instructor at "7 Friends & Watches", an atelier specializing in handcrafted natural leather watch straps for high-end watches.
There, I trained artisans in production workflows, tool use and stitching techniques, while also contributing to the optimization of production processes and to the development of watch straps designed to provide comfort, durability and quality through the use of fine leathers, technical reinforcements and high-level finishing.
Medieval-design wallets you won't find anywhere else. Giving new leather a history of its own.
Strength and durability are only part of what I do.
I have always been fascinated by medieval style and by objects born in artisan workshops, where ingenuity and craftsmanship could leave nothing to chance and had to serve the highest quality possible. That is where my style comes from.
For this reason, I do not chase trends or reproduce familiar shapes: I prefer to create objects with a distinct personality, capable of standing out without unnecessary excess, as if I were working in an artisan workshop exactly as it might have been six hundred years ago.
It is a slower and often more demanding approach, but it is also what allows me to create something that truly feels like my own.
Handcrafted salmon leather inserts
From time to time, I like to add a detail in exotic leather.
Among the materials I work with is salmon leather, which I tan myself starting from the raw skin.
Through a lengthy process of cleaning, treatment and finishing, I transform a discarded material into something highly refined, with a fine, durable surface, suitable for my needs.
What you will find here
You won't find collections designed simply to fill a catalogue here. I create and I publish.
If you look at what is out there and feel that it does not represent you, you may find something here that speaks our language. Feel free to contact me for a custom project, or to bring to life a design you have in mind, in my style.