2 days ago · Advertorial · by Claire Hollis

“I never planned to stop. My thumbs decided for me” — Hilary (70) is selling her last handmade owl bags at a special price. The owl bag Walsall knows her for is retiring with her.

For more than fifty years, Hilary Tranter has cut and stitched leather in Walsall — the town that once made saddles for half the world. Now her little workshop by the canal is closing. And she is letting go of the bag that made her name: the small owl bag she first cut in 1996. Why is everyone suddenly asking for it? Because this is the last time it will ever be offered.

Hilary Tranter (70) in her workshop above the Walsall Canal. After more than fifty years, she is putting her needles down.

Walsall, a cold, bright Tuesday in October. The workshop smells of leather and beeswax. On the shelves sit rows of small black owls, their amber eyes catching the light from the window. On the bench: two needles, an awl, a reel of waxed thread, and a wooden clamp worn smooth from years of use.

Hilary sits down and pulls the clamp between her knees. Then she stops. She puts the needles back down.

“I never planned to stop,” she says. “My thumbs decided for me.” She holds up her right hand. The joint at the bottom of her thumb is swollen and bent slightly inwards. “The doctor calls it thumb arthritis. Everyone who stitches by hand gets it in the end. Fifty years of pulling thread through leather, and the joint just gives up.”

She can still cut. She can still glue and polish an edge. “But I can’t stitch any more. Not properly. And the stitching is the whole bag. If I can’t do the stitching, it isn’t my bag. I won’t put my name on it.”

Fifty years, more than 9,000 owls — a life spent in the leather town

Walsall was once Britain’s capital of saddles and leather. There were more than a hundred leather workshops in the town. The football club is still called “The Saddlers”. Today only a handful of workshops are left.

Hilary started in 1973, aged seventeen, in a saddlery on Lower Rushall Street. “There were forty women stitching in one room. You could hear the needles going from the street.” Her teacher was Ivy Bagnall, the head stitcher. “Ivy used to say: the thread remembers every lazy stitch. I’ve never forgotten it.”

In 1996 Hilary opened her own small workshop by the canal. Since then, she has made more than 9,000 owl bags. Every single one went through her hands.

What makes Hilary’s owl bag different from anything in the shops

Nine hours of work in one small bag: three layers, hand-set amber eyes, and edges polished four times.

People stop for the face. But what makes the bag last is how it is built underneath. Hilary learned it from Ivy, and Ivy learned it before the war. Almost nobody works like this any more. It simply takes too many hours.

Why a factory seam opens all at once — and hers never does

Two needles, one thread, both through the same hole. Nine hours per bag instead of nine minutes.

Every seam is sewn by hand with two needles. Both go through the same hole, from opposite sides. A factory bag is sewn by machine with one long thread. If that thread breaks once, the whole seam opens like a zip. “With my stitch, if one breaks, only that one breaks,” Hilary says. “The bag stays shut. That is the whole point. It just takes me nine hours instead of nine minutes.”

Two millimetres decide whether she looks cross or wise

Every scale on the wings is pressed in by hand, one tap at a time.

The owl’s face is not printed. It is built from three separate layers of leather: a base, a pair of patterned wings, and a thin brow line set by hand. “The brow is tiny,” she says. “Move it two millimetres and she looks cross instead of wise. I’ve thrown away more brows than I’ve kept.”

The one place where every cheap bag quietly falls apart

Each edge is sanded, sealed and polished four times, with a night’s rest in between.

Cheap bags leave the cut edge raw. “That’s where a bag dies,” Hilary says. “British rain gets into a raw edge. It swells, it frays, and after two winters it looks furry.” She sands, seals and polishes every edge four times. “Do it properly and it stays smooth for twenty years.”

Why her eyes seem to follow you

Left: the face before it goes on the bag. Right: the finished eye, set deep into the leather.

Each eye is set into a small hollow, not glued flat on top. That is why the owl seems to watch you when you turn the bag. “People think it’s a trick,” she laughs. “It’s just a little hollow and fifty years of practice.”

“Some of my customers have carried theirs for twenty years”

Hilary pulls an old biscuit tin out from under the bench. It is full of letters and cards. Hundreds of them.

She takes one out, posted in 2004. It reads: “Dear Mrs Tranter, my owl has now been to fourteen countries with me. The strap is a little softer and the corners have gone smooth. She looks better than the day I bought her.”

The reason is simple. Time instead of speed. A factory makes a bag every nine minutes. One of Hilary’s owls takes eight to nine hours, from the first cut to the last polished edge.

The end of an era — and one last chance

What is left of a life’s work: 1,312 finished owls on the shelves of Hilary’s workshop.

On 19 December, Hilary will lock the workshop for good. “There’s nobody to hand it on to. Nobody wants to learn this now. It takes years before your stitches are even straight.”

There are 1,312 finished owl bags left on the shelves. She counted them twice. They are the last ones that will ever come from her hands.

To find them a home before the door closes, she has done something she has never done in fifty years: she has lowered the price. A lot. “It isn’t about the money. I could ask three times as much. But then they’d sit in a drawer somewhere. An owl in a drawer is no use to anybody. I want them carried. I want them going soft at the corners where somebody’s hand rests on them.”

Her granddaughter Megan (26) looks after the online side. “I haven’t a clue how any of that works,” Hilary says with a laugh. “She does the computer. I do the leather. That was the deal.”

The owl on the chimney across the canal

“The night shift”: the tawny owl that has lived in the old tannery chimney for as long as Hilary can remember.

It was Megan who asked the obvious question: why an owl? Hilary pointed out of the window. Across the canal stands the empty brick chimney of an old tannery. “There’s been a tawny owl living up there since before I opened. When I switch the light on in the evening, he starts calling. And when I go home at midnight, he’s still at it. I call him the night shift.” In 1996 she cut a bag with his face on it. It has never stopped selling.

What makes Hilary’s owl bags so special:

What real customers say about Hilary’s owls

A photo a customer sent to the workshop. Hilary pins them on the wall above her bench.

• ★★★★★

  “I expected a novelty bag and got something I use every single day. Phone, keys, purse, all in, and it sits flat instead of swinging about. Three people asked me about it in the first week.”

  Janet H., 64, Shrewsbury
• ★★★★★

  “All my small bags go floppy after one winter. This one keeps its shape. You can feel the difference the moment you pick it up.”

  Anne-Marie T., 58, Harrogate
• ★★★★★

  “It is smaller than I pictured, and that turned out to be the best thing about it. It holds what I actually need. I don’t take a big handbag to the shops any more.”

  Pauline R., 71, Bath
• ★★★★★

  “My granddaughter named her Winnie within ten minutes of it arriving. She has borrowed it twice already. I’ve had to order a second one so I can keep mine.”

  Graham B., 67, Lichfield

“The right present for someone you really care about”

What makes the owl a present, and not just a purchase, is that there is a real person and a real place behind it. “When you give someone this, you’re giving them nine hours of one woman’s work,” Hilary says. “From a town that used to make everything. And it won’t exist again.”

Her customer Susan P. (59) from Stafford puts it simply: “I gave one to my mum for her eightieth. She turned it over, looked at the stitching on the back and got a bit teary. Not about the owl. About the fact that someone still sits down and does that by hand.”

Where can you get one of Hilary’s owls?

Hilary’s owls are only available through Craft Folk, a small online shop for work by independent makers. Megan looks after Hilary’s corner of it. It is the only place her originals are sold. Copies have started to appear on the big marketplaces: the same shape, but machine-sewn, with raw edges and glued-on eyes. They have nothing to do with the bags that leave her workshop by the canal.

Only until the shelves are empty — then it is over

“Fifty years. It was a good run.” Hilary locks the workshop for the last time on 19 December.

Hilary wants to lock the door for the last time on 19 December. “I’d like every one of them on somebody’s shoulder by then. After that there’s nothing left.” She smiles a little. “Fifty years. It was a good run.”

If you would like one of the originals from her last collection, don’t wait too long. With the lower price and Christmas coming, 1,312 is fewer than it sounds.

It is the last chance to own a piece of the craft that built a whole town — before Hilary Tranter’s owls are gone for good.

Our verdict

Hilary Tranter’s owl is a small cross-body bag that people grow very fond of. It is stitched by hand, built in three layers, polished at every edge, and just the right size for what you really carry: phone, keys, purse.

It is also the last work of one of the last hand stitchers in a town that once had hundreds. That is not a sales line. That is simply where things have ended up.

Thank you, Hilary.

Everyone is talking about Hilary’s owls

• “I went to Walsall to see the workshop. Shelves full of owls, leather everywhere, and this lovely woman who has been doing it since before I was born. I came home with three for Christmas.”

  Sarah G., Wolverhampton

• “It really upsets me that makers like this are disappearing and hardly anyone notices. I ordered two straight away, one for me and one for my mum. We both love them.”

  The Morgan family, Cardiff

• “The face is what gets you. She actually has an expression. And the stitching on the back is neater than on bags I paid four times as much for.”

  Linda S., Norwich

• “I’ve carried mine every day since spring. Rain, buses, the lot. It has gone a little softer and I like it more than when it came.”

  Jean P., Exeter

• “My daughter pinched mine within a week. I had to order another one for myself. That’s the most honest review I can give.”

  Margaret K., Leeds