By Dipanjan Chatterjee

By the Arno river, nestled against a lampredotto shop where Florentians devour tripe sandwiches, is a nondescript atelier, a workshop.

And in this atelier, redolent with the smell of warm leather and nostalgia, sits a man with thick horn-rimmed glasses, hair greying at the temple, hunched over a single shoe that he stitches with the same loving devotion with which Brunelleschi crafted the dome of Florence’s cathedral. It must have been in a workshop like this, about 200 years ago and 1,000 miles away, that Thierry Hermes built his first horse saddle, and later, a hand bag to hold saddles.

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Source: The Drum