Cloth maker · Mill
J & FJ Baker
J & FJ Baker is England's last oak-bark tannery, slowly tanning sole leather in Devon over about a year for custom and high-end shoes.
J & FJ Baker tans sole leather in Devon using oak bark and a pit process lasting roughly twelve months, the traditional method, now almost entirely extinct. Its leather is used for the soles of bespoke and high-end welted shoes.
A year in the pits
Oak-bark tanning moves hides through a sequence of pits of increasing tannin strength over about a year. The resulting sole leather is dense, firm and slow to wear; it abrades gradually rather than tearing, and it moulds to the foot.
Chrome tanning does an equivalent job in a day, which is why almost nobody does this any more. The remaining market is bespoke and high-end welted shoemaking, where the sole is expected to be replaced several times and the shoe to last decades.
The process
Hides move through a sequence of pits containing progressively stronger liquor made from oak bark, over roughly twelve months, with the tannins penetrating slowly and completely. They are then dried, rolled and finished.
The tannery uses water from the river beside it and has done so since the eighteenth century. It is the last operation of its kind in England.
Why oak bark still exists
Because the leather is different. Oak-bark sole leather is denser and firmer than chrome-tanned equivalents, wears by abrading rather than tearing, and moulds to the foot as it compresses. For a shoe expected to be resoled several times over decades, the difference is real. It is also uneconomic by any modern measure: a year of capital tied up in pits for a material a chrome tannery produces in a day. The business survives because bespoke and high-end welted shoemaking will pay for it.