Buying leather the way you buy fish

Dawn Market's founder describes the sourcing process as inherited: early, in whatever quantity is going, from people you know. In her grandmother's case it was fish. In hers it is furniture hide.

Three makers in Qingdao supply everything the studio uses. What arrives is unpredictable in size and consistent in quality, which inverts the usual design process — you do not draw a bag and then find the leather, you take what came in and find the bag inside it.

The rule that follows

No panel may exceed the size of a reliably available scrap. So the Offcut Tote is eleven pieces rather than four, every edge is painted by hand, and the construction is visible because hiding it would be a lie about how the thing was made.

“Two bags from the same batch look related. Two bags from different batches are strangers. We stamp the batch number so you know which you have.”