Organic Cattle from California

Question from Customer Danielle: One question – have you ever visited the farms that supply you? That would be interesting to just confirm that they are also animal lovers and take care both with their lives and death.

Answer: When we 1st started this we knew the exact farm our leather was coming form, it was the best one in California where they have their own slaughter house on their land and the animals are not shipped any distance before dying- However the tannery we were working with was ancient, and closed down-

The path between the Farm and the tannery is not at all direct, the cattle, and then the hides go through numerous hands- and so far there is no way to track the individual hides as they go through this process-

We are in the process of coming up with a way to track them and believe with in a year we will have a much better tracking system.

This is why for now we have chosen to work with South America where we at least know the animals are free range, an lead good lives- We know nothing of the manner of their death though and wont be able to comment on that until we go down there later this year.

As this is a complex and deeply “entrenched in it ways” system-  we have chosen to tackle things one at a time-
Our 1st priority is not adding any further pollution to the environment through the tanning- since the leather it’s self is a byproduct of an existing industry this is the 1st area where we can really have impact in changing things- so now we have that in place and are able to supply an ecologically tanned product to get us all started,  we can start improving other aspects of the chain.

"Union Bangles" with "Chi Charms" and High Chi Jewelry, Custom Organic Sheepskin Jacket.

Deborah Stuart and Sonia Lub, Living the Charmed Life in Bangles and Jewels.

All Photographs and Article by Rowan Gabrielle

Joey House wearing "Union Bangles" and High Chi Necklace

Organic Leather’s Ethos is all about living in harmony with our natural world and expressing our true nature- we believe in living a charmed life, full of wonder, and we try to embody that in our shoot’s and of-cause in our Designs.

Here you get sneak preview of some of our upcoming lines, the hand made silver piece, “Lovers” two gorgeously simple hand made sterling  Silver Heart’s, and “infinity” the Silver leather keeper for wearing leather rope on your wrist. Stunning Co-branding shoot with HighChi.com done with the crazy and wonderful “lens baby” (gives it that dream like quality). It was a magical day, a window into the possibility of living a charmed life in the midst of this ever changing wild and wonderful world we live in, it is the choices we make daily that brings a charmed life to us. Our “Union Bangles” with the Charms you ad to them are meant as a simple reminder to live the life you dream of. View full shoot: http://homepage.mac.com/rowan23/CharmedLife/

"Lovers" silver Hearts and "Infinity" leather rope Keeper.

"Union Bangles", "Chi Charms" and "Lovers" Necklace.

All Photography and Article by Rowan Gabrielle

Ultimate Luxury - Organic Sheepskin

Welcome to the Organic Leather Blog – When I first came up with this concept in 2002 there was no organic leather any where to be found, over the following years I just started talking about it and looking for it and eventually hooked up with people tanning leather in the traditional ways (All organic) like Matt Richards from Braintan, and Nicki Port from Organic Sheep skins, between them and the Oak bark tannery in Oregon that was from 1810 (and is now closed) I managed to get my hands on enough leather to create a sample line that was launched at Eco-Petal Fashion Show in 2006. We did this with the intention of getting press, and making the larger community of tanners and designers aware of these ideas and options. Since then we have been working on finding sustainable sources of organic and eco Leather to be able to supply designers and ourselves in creating organic and eco leather products. Most of the Leather we sell is what I would call 99% eco, there are still issues in doing this on a large scale basis and there are lots of people now working on creating solutions to the issues still involved, we have come a long way from chrome tanned though and the designers we work supply can feel good about the choose they are making in working with this leather. Post by Rowan Gabrielle