Red and burgundy English bridle leather briefcase with tan straps and a tan top handle, on white

A Hinge for Leather That Won’t Bend

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis
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The Woodhull 4703, and the English bridle leather that was made to hold a horse

Bridle leather is built to be stiff. That is the whole point of it, and it’s also the problem I had to solve when I decided to build a briefcase that opens like a drawer.

Video: “Woodhull 4703 English Bridle Leather Briefcase updated style 2024,” Marcellino NY Briefcase Maker on YouTube, September 23, 2024.

Leather made for a horse’s head

The UK bridle leather I use comes from tanneries in the English Midlands. One of the old names there is J&E Sedgwick of Walsall, founded in 1900 to make leather for bridles and saddles by traditional methods. A bridle has to hold its shape, resist sweat and take a beating from a strong animal, so the leather is vegetable tanned, dyed in drums with waxes and tallows, and then hot stuffed with more of the same. One supplier describes the result as stiff when finished, turning supple only with care and break-in.

That description matches what happens on my bench. A new piece of English bridle doesn’t fold, it resists. It takes a bend and keeps it. I buy the bend, the dense back of the hide, and throw the belly away. For the oversized cases I’ve built for clients, a single case can take half of an animal.

Stiff leather is a gift for a briefcase that has to stand up on its own. It’s a nuisance when the flap has to open very wide.

The crease

On almost every briefcase I make, the flap and the back are one piece of leather. Open it to the limit and you meet the bend point. Keep pulling and the leather creases, right at the spine, in a line that never entirely leaves. I said so in the finished-build video: if the Woodhull were one continuous piece, it would open to a certain point, you’d stop pulling back, and you’d have that crease. So I didn’t make it one piece.

The case lying on its side with four compartments in blue suede, red leather loops along the top edge, and the burgundy suede flap with matching red loops lying beside it

The flap here is a separate panel. Red leather loops, skived thin so they wrap smoothly, hang from both the body and the flap, and a round bar passes through them. The flap turns on that bar like a door on a hinge. On the 2021 build I cut the round bar with a Dremel and sanded it smooth, and I filmed the bar and the loops for a lawyer’s case. On the 4703 the bar is wood, and it slides out if you want the top off, and then the case sits open for good.

I’ll say it plainly. This hinge is the hardest thing in the whole piece. A quarter inch off and the flap rides crooked for the life of the case.

768 and 1,872

My standard briefcase is 16 inches wide, 12 high and 4 deep. Multiply those and you get 768 cubic inches of box. The Woodhull 4703 is 18 by 13 by 8, four compartments of 2 inches each. That multiplies out to 1,872, about two and a half times the standard case. Those are outside dimensions, not what it holds, but the arithmetic explains why I describe it as two briefcases built into one.

The case open, four compartments lined in royal blue Italian calf suede with a red sheepskin suede panel and red leather tabs along the top

I lined it in royal blue Italian calf suede and red sheepskin. Sheepskin is more velvety than calf suede and less durable, which is why the red sits on one panel and the blue does the heavy work. The outside is UK bridle in London tan, cherry red and burgundy.

One for a lawyer, one for a doctor

I’d built the idea before. In 2021 a lawyer ordered two very large cases: a Woodhull around 20 by 13 inches with six or seven inch gussets, and a triple-gusset Habermas. He’d been through a lot of briefcases in his career, he told me, and the thin ones made with cardboard break down within a few years. Anyone who uses a case hard should go thick, I said, and I still believe that. That Woodhull weighed nearly ten pounds empty.

The 4703 started with a doctor who wanted a file cabinet beside his desk. I planned it on camera in August 2024, and then showed the pivot at the second stage.

Video: “Update #2 on Woodhull briefcase build,” Marcellino NY Briefcase Maker on YouTube, September 2, 2024.

It has a handle and a shoulder strap, and it’s heavy enough that I tell people what I tell you: desk to car, or onto a trolley cart at the airport. Don’t walk it across town.

The locks

A side view of the case showing four gussets alternating tan leather and burgundy leather, with brass hardware at the top

The two push locks on the front are Cobra buckles, made by Austrialpin in Fulpmes, in the Stubai Valley in Tyrol, Austria. I’ve called them Swiss in earlier videos. That was my mistake. They’re aluminum alloy, and the maker says its PRO STYLE models need both release clips pressed at the same moment to open, and lock with an audible click. The company also sells them for rescue and military use. I’ve never put a briefcase to that sort of test, and I wouldn’t claim to.

What I like is simpler. You push them in and they open. I called them very durable in the video, and years of putting hardware on cases sit behind that.

A sculpture that holds paper

The client told me he saw the case more as an art piece, and that’s how I’ve always wanted my work to be seen: as a sculpture first, a briefcase second. A cabinet that arrives in tan, red and burgundy with a blue interior doesn’t pretend to be furniture. It’s more like a painting with drawers.

I think the best owner for a Woodhull is someone whose desk is already buried in paper. A physician with charts, a litigator with files, anyone who needs documents within reach and has to move them from the office to a car now and then. For a commute on foot, choose something smaller.

The listing is live and the button at the top leads there. I can build it lined, as shown, or unlined for less.

Sources

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