Founder
Fish Skin & Wallet
What the market threw away, tanned into a leather softer than calf.
Rizky Maulana, LeatherworkerBanyuwangi, East Java, Indonesia
Rizky Maulana trained as a cow-leather worker and lived next to a fish market. The smell was not the problem; the waste was.
The first skin took a month of failed tanning to get right. The second took a week.
“The fish market threw out buckets of skins every morning. I took one home to see what would happen.”
Fish skin is a by-product of filleting and is usually dumped or burned. Tanned, it is stronger than cow leather of the same thickness, because its fibres cross instead of running in one direction.
The scale pattern stays, even after the scales are gone.
The card wallet is cut from a single skin and vegetable-tanned, then stitched by hand with waxed linen.
It darkens with use, like any good leather.