Beautiful soft bags, shoes and accessories made out of cork.
As light as a feather, they don’t mind the rain either!
These are all made by hand by artisans in Portugal and their softness belies the fact they are actually quite hard wearing and of course waterproof!
Cork is the bark of the cork oak (Quercus suber L), a tree found in the Mediterranean regions such as Spain, Italy, France, Morocco, Algeria and, most particularly, in Portugal, where there are more than 720 thousand hectares of cork forests.
These very long-lived trees have an enormous capacity for regeneration. Each living on average 150 to 200 years, despite its bark being stripped around 16 times during its lifetime, at nine-year intervals.
Sheets are made with very thin strips of cork to create a fabric that is similar in many ways to leather, except cork is much lighter.
These sheets are hand sewn together to create these wonderful bags and shoes.
Each is made one at a time in small shops located throughout the cork growing region of Portugal.
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