A briefcase has two origins. One is the workshop where the panels are cut, stitched and finished. The other is the tannery where the hide became leather, and the two are often on different continents. Looking at both explains why some American-made bags cost four figures and why the label on the lining tells only half the story.
Marcellino NY Briefcase Maker on YouTube: hand stitching versus rivets.
Frank Clegg Leatherworks, Massachusetts
Frank Clegg’s workshop sits in an old textile mill in Fall River, Massachusetts, according to Babson Magazine. Retailers such as The Armoury describe the line as designed and made in a Massachusetts workshop, and a Stridewise review traces the business to 1970, built on the founder’s father’s work as a leatherworker.
The leather is where the story gets specific. Stridewise reports the briefcases use vegetable-tanned leather, drum dyed so the color runs through, and that Clegg admits to using French hides and keeps his tanneries private. An American-made bag, in other words, does not always mean American leather. The same reviewer calls the burnished edge the brand’s pride and lists a zip-top model at 17 by 12 by 4 inches, with no laptop sleeve inside.
Prices run high. The Armoury lists the zip-top double gusset briefcase at $1,450, and No Man Walks Alone lists the black English briefcase at $995. Retail prices move. These are the figures displayed when this was written.
WaterField Designs, San Francisco
WaterField takes a different route: soft-sided bags with leather accents, and leather briefcases made in small batches. The company’s own site says it has made products in the USA since 1998, at a time when offshore manufacturing was the trend and many San Francisco sewing shops closed.
Its Lexington Leather Brief, introduced in 2026, is handcrafted in the San Francisco workshop from full-grain leather, with foam reinforcement and a padded sleeve for laptops up to 16 inches, listed at $579. The 2019 Executive Leather Laptop Briefcase was described in its press release as manufactured entirely in San Francisco.
The press materials say where the bag is sewn. They never name the tannery.
Marcellino NY, New York
This is my own shop, so take it with that in mind. I build structured bridle leather briefcases by hand and saddle stitch them, no sewing machine. In my videos I show a Hermann Oak harness leather portfolio with burnished natural edges, and in others I cut English bridle from the UK mill JE Sedgwick, so the leather in the shop is domestic and imported depending on the model. My hand stitching versus rivets video above shows why I sew the stress points instead of riveting them.
The origin question on one of my bags has the same two parts as everyone else’s: where it is stitched, and where the leather was tanned. The product page for each model names the leather.
Hermann Oak, St. Louis
If a workshop says its leather is American, one of two names usually follows. Hermann Oak Leather has been tanning in St. Louis since 1881. Louis Charles Hermann started to serve the local harness trade and settlers heading west, and the company says it operates in the same location on North First Street today, now in its fourth generation of family leadership. The tannery supplies skirting, harness, bridle, strap, tooling and luggage leathers.
Bridle and harness are the two grades a briefcase maker reaches for. A BestLeather review of the tannery’s lines found English Bridle the firmest, with a finer finish from special waxes, and Harness close behind.
Wickett & Craig, Pennsylvania
The other name is Wickett & Craig, founded in 1867 and now based in Curwensville, Pennsylvania. It started in Toronto. Sources disagree on the year of the move, one giving 1989 and another 1990.
Its English bridle takes about six weeks from raw hide to finished leather, followed by drum dyeing and hot stuffing with waxes. Filson, which uses the tannery’s leather in its luggage, puts the vegetable tanning at roughly six weeks, against a third of that for chrome tanning, which it says covers 90 percent of the leather on the market.
Several sources call Wickett & Craig and Hermann Oak the only two vegetable tanneries left in the United States. The retailers and review sites I cite here repeat the claim, and no industry census backs it, so read it as a common description, not a counted fact.
How to read a label
- “Made in” or “handcrafted in” describes the workshop.
- The tannery, when named, describes the leather.
- A specific leather type (harness, English bridle, belting) tells more than the words “full grain.”
- The price tracks the hours of hand work and the leather, and those are separate questions.
What “Made in USA” can legally claim is a separate subject, and it has its own post in this journal.
Sources
- Babson Magazine, Frank Clegg profile
- Stridewise, Frank Clegg review
- Stridewise, Frank Clegg leather selection
- The Armoury, Frank Clegg Zip-Top briefcase
- No Man Walks Alone, Frank Clegg English briefcase
- WaterField Designs, made in the USA since 1998
- Fashion Mannuscript, WaterField Lexington Leather Brief
- PRWeb, WaterField Executive Leather Laptop Briefcase
- Leather Naturally, Hermann Oak Leather
- ShopTalk, a conversation with Shep Hermann
- BestLeather, Hermann Oak
- Leather Magazine, Wickett & Craig
- Patina Project, Wickett & Craig skirting and English bridle
- Bootspy, Wickett & Craig and overview
- Filson, Wickett & Craig x Filson
- Marcellino NY Briefcase Maker, hand stitching versus rivets
