We have just launched a collection of dog collars and leads that are made using the Holy Grail of leathers.
First up today, we have just launched a collection of dog collars and leads that are made using the Holy Grail of leathers, tanned in Britain and dyed using bark to achieve a subtle, smokey finish. There are very few bark-dyeing tanneries left in Britain and, when combined with British fixtures and a striking contrast stitching, these are super special. Support British artisans! Believe in provenance!
Next.
It’s interesting to note that esteemed chef Angela Hartnett has joined the Off the Table movement in urging chefs and home cooks to stop using farmed salmon. The principal justification for this is that wild and farmed salmon can’t co-exist.
It’s a noble cause and like most important things, it is both simple and complicated.
The reduction in salmon numbers is one of many declines that we’ve witnessed in wildlife at Glen Dye in the last 20 years or so*. Once it was incredibly simple to catch salmon, grilse and sea trout in our river. Now it is nigh on impossible.
*Some animals are thriving at Glen Dye; red squirrels and red kites, and Drinker caterpillars are back. But this is a detour, even for this discursive newsletter.
What resonates with me about Off the Table is that it is in essence about provenance. It’s about knowing where what you consume comes from, what impact that has, and that you have the power to influence consumer behaviour, if in tiny ways.
If we can consider provenance in our purchasing decisions-and not everyone can, by any means- then we have to. This is a duty. It is about the value rather than the price of the food on your plate, the chair you sit on, the socks you pull on, that baseball cap you bought for fun and have ten of already. It is about the impact that these things have on the world.
You know this but remind yourself today.
Perhaps you should stop buying farmed salmon, but perhaps you should also stop buying Chinese-made clothes or junk furniture. If you read this newsletter, then my guess is that you can do this if you choose to even though it’s an effort. Small ripples and all that.
In other news, you may subscribe to the emails I write each month for Glen Dye and Hawarden about music, art and books. If you don’t, do please consider doing so.
Either way -bit of a leap here- the provenance of books matters too. Today I want to tell you about one book that I read recently that has perfect provenance and is also frigging good.
Mad Shepherds by L P Jacks has just been reprinted by the wonderful small imprint Little Toller Books. It was first published in 1910 and offers an extraordinary, compulsive and vivid portrait of some of the people that occupy part of the Vale of Evesham. Meet the gruff, cosmically-minded, incredibly rude but brilliant shepherd Snarly Bob, or his great admirer the Rector’s wife Mrs Abel, or Tom Hankin the shoemaker. Every character is unique, their portraits equally so.
This is not only great, but the publisher deserves your support, as does Caught by the River (genius, done for love) who recommended it to me. You see, even books can have great provenance.
Big love
Charlie. x
