Handcrafted leather goods: handmade wallets with a unique design
"Hi! I'm Gianluca Sordi. I couldn't find anything that felt right, so I made my own wallet. Today, I design and make leather goods for people who feel the same way."
Discover my small handcrafted leather goods workshop
Why I created this handcrafted leather goods line
I was looking for a handmade leather wallet that truly felt like it was made for me, but everything I found always left me disagreeing with something. Out of that absence, my first one-of-a-kind piece was born.
While making that wallet, I discovered my passion for hand-crafted leather and authentic craftsmanship, along with an unexpected gift for the craft.
A family craft: 25 years of travel bags behind me
.oOo.
My experience comes from a family that produced travel bags for more than 25 years for an Italian airline company. A workshop full of prototypes, stress tests, reinforced stitching, and materials designed to survive belts, layovers and impacts.
I grew up next to those workbenches, observing how you conceive an object that must not let down the person who uses it, learning what it means to work with method and respect.
Every mistake, was a lesson: that’s where I understood that true “quality” is the sum of a thousand invisible decisions.
A solid and ideal foundation for my own vision of handcrafted leather goods.
My process: design first
Whenever I begin a new piece, I always start with the form I want to achieve, the materials I want to use, and the feeling I want it to convey.
I sketch the piece as if it already existed - its proportions, lines, closures, and that subtle medieval character that is essential to my work.
Once I'm satisfied with both the design and the functionality, I begin to take the piece apart in my mind, breaking it down into every component: panels, folds, stitching, and stress points, to understand whether it can truly be built.
At this stage, I decide how the leather will be cut, which stitching method to use, and how the edges will be finished, ensuring that construction and design work together seamlessly in everyday use.
Although I love sewing machines and consider them true jewels of pure mechanics, I choose to stitch each of my creations exclusively by hand, using the saddle stitch technique.
Leather as a living material
I chose leather because I want to create objects that speak to touch, smell and the passing of time: pocket companions you see and feel dozens of times a day, able to change along with you.
Leather is a living material. It softens, it becomes shinier in the spots that are touched most often, and it preserves the marks left by time and use.
My work is to give it a shape and a structure that allow it to age with elegance, together with the person who carries it every day.
From small leather workshop to Master Instructor
This relationship with leather has taken me beyond my personal workshop.
Thanks to the experience and skills I have developed over the years, I was invited as Master Instructor by "7 Friends & Watches", an atelier specializing in natural leather and nubuck straps for high‑end watches.
There I trained artisans on the production workflow, the use of tools and stitching techniques, also helping to optimize production processes and to create straps designed to offer comfort, durability and quality, through the use of fine leathers, technical reinforcements and high‑level finishes.
Wallets with a medieval design you won’t find elsewhere
Solidity and durability are only one part of my work. The other is design.
I have always been fascinated by medieval style and by the objects born in artisan workshops, when every shape had a precise reason and nothing was left to chance. That is where my style comes from.
This is why I do not chase trends or reproduce shapes that have already been seen: I prefer to create objects with a clear personality, able to stand out without needing excess.
It is a slower and often more complicated approach, but it is also what allows me to create something I truly feel is mine.
Inserts in artisan‑tanned salmon leather
Every now and then, I like to add a detail in exotic leather.
Among the materials I use there is also salmon leather, which I tan myself starting from the raw skin.
Through a long process of cleaning, treatments and finishing, I turn a waste material into a highly refined one, with a resistant and delicate surface whose grain dialogues with bovine leather.
What you will find here
On this website you will not find collections designed just to fill a catalogue.
If you look at what is out there and feel it doesn’t represent you, here you might find something that speaks your language.