By Kate Stanton:
We value sustainability and its importance but the truth is, we don’t try that hard to achieve it.
It’s not that we’re reckless about the environment, people and the planet, just fortunate that our low environmental impact is a naturally occurring advantage of the way we work – and who we work with.
One company that illustrates this happy coincidence is J. & F. J. Baker and Co Ltd. Their commitment to traditional methods sees them powering much of their production via a 400-year-old water wheel. Like Crown, they’re a family business that goes back generations – they’ve been in the business for 150 years, and work from a site that has housed tanneries since Roman times, in Colyton, Devonshire.
It is now the only oak-bark tannery left in Britain.
J. & F. J. Baker’s process is close to carbon-neutral and is far friendlier to people, planet and animals than more modern, intensive practices. The hides used for tanning are from free-range cattle that have roamed the local region, feeding on grass. This diet ensures the animals produce less harmful gas than they would being industrially farmed. The cattle are reared and farmed for meat, making the skins a by-product which would otherwise be discarded and wasted.
Oak bark and water are all that’s used in the tanning, with the bark from trees grown in Cumbria, in the north of England. Another working style – and value Crown Northampton share with J. & F. J. Baker, is a belief in the inimitable value skilled workers bring, so if a person can do a job the same or better than a machine, people power is always favoured.
Free-range cattle hides at J. & F. J. Baker Oak Bark Tanners
Stores of oak bark at J. & F. J. Bakers in Colyton, Devon.
Staff dip the hides in a pit of specially formulated tan liquors
It allows for more quality control and results in products that each have individual value. It also means skilled people are kept in work, keeping alive traditions and knowledge in danger of being lost or replaced by technology. And, of course, more manpower means the use of less non-renewable power. The leathers tanned in Colyton are stained and finished by hand and even moved from pit to pit and shed to pit without machine assistance, despite being large and very weighty – two workers are necessary for this step.
Any machinery that is used has been in operation for more than 100 years. Keeping them going means relying on knowledgeable, experienced engineers, another way in which the whole process helps keeps skills alive and skilled people in work. And rather than rushing to replace machines which can no longer be repaired, the company will work to adapt them or break them down to reuse the parts elsewhere.
Waste is kept to a minimum in other ways too: natural products are used to dye the leathers, which negates the use of harmful chemicals and effluent to be got rid of. As disposing of animal products must, by law, be done through incineration or landfill, J. & F. J. Baker has invested in a biomass boiler which takes the waste hair, fat and offcuts and converts them to energy. This helps heat the tannery, reducing the gas needed for drying the leathers, post-tanning.
The long-term plan is for an entirely carbon-neutral tannery with no reliance on fossil fuels.
While modern manufacturing tends to focus on making more; faster; cheaper, it often comes at the cost of sustainability and skilled jobs – and quality.
A modern factory can take a hide and turn it into leather in as little as ten days. J. & F. J. Baker will take around 15 months to do the same sort of thing. The only difference from the latter being a leather that will last a lifetime.
A leather made with skill and care by people, rather than computer and in tune with the natural environment, not against it.
What This Means for Our Sneakers And Shoes
At Crown, we use J. & F.J. Baker’s oak bark-tanned leather where it matters most.
You’ll find it on the upper of the Ernest Wholecut, the founding style in our Hand Welted Collection. We chose Bakers for this shoe because their oak bark-tanned calf offered the structure, strength, and natural character that suited the pattern and the way we wanted it to feel. It’s leather that holds shape, softens with wear, and is built to last decades, just as it should.
Bakers materials are used both on the surface and within. Across many of our sneakers, you will find their leather used in internal components such as stiffeners and toe puffs. These parts help maintain the shape, support the fit, and influence how the shoe feels as it settles to the foot. They are not often seen, but they make a difference with every wear.
Explore the Ernest Wholecut
Full-grain Bakers oak bark-tanned leather, shaped slowly and made to last.
