A lot goes into making the world's finest gloves and here are the secret ingredients to our craftsmanship.
- Our leather buyer has almost 50 years experience in selecting only the softest and finest quality leathers for Dents hand made gloves.
- For over 230 years Dents has been designing and manufacturing leather gloves in England, for the world’s finest shops and department stores. The first pair was cut by Master Cutter, John Dent, in the year 1777, in the city of Worcester. For the past 50 years, Dents gloves have been crafted in the old market town of Warminster, in the quintessential English county of Wiltshire.
- Today, as in the past, Dents gloves are made using traditional methods handed down over the centuries. Little has changed from 1777 in the way we make gloves, apart from the introduction of electricity.
- Each pair is still bench cut, one at a time, relying on the skill and experience of the master cutter to shape the well fitting glove.
- Dents gloves are made with a completely separate glove lining to the outer leather shell, and the lining is then fitted into the glove, ensuring a much better fitting glove – this method of manufacture is called “glove in glove”, and is an added cost, but an essential part of the traditional glove maker’s craft.
- There are 42 components to cut, assemble and sew together, to create one pair of Dents gloves.
- In the manufacture of one pair of gloves, there are 32 separate operations to be performed by highly skilled craft people.
- It takes time to make fine leather gloves – approximately 7 hours to cut and sew just one pair,
- It takes up to six years to fully train a glove cutter, and four years to fully train a skilled glove sewer.
- Today, when we use machinery, we use the same type of Singer sewing machines we have been using for over a hundred years, except that now they are driven by electricity, rather than by a foot pedal. The machines we use are no longer manufactured, and the skill of our mechanics is constantly tested in repairing and lengthening their useful life.
Dents is one of only a few glove manufacturers who are still able to create gloves using real peccary leather (a peccary is a mammal from South America that resembles a pig). The reason is that only a master cutter with unique skills and much experience can cut this wonderful leather. It also requires a hand machinist with dexterity and many years experience to sew it. Possibly, this is why peccary leather gloves are increasingly found in fewer and fewer of the world’s finest stores.
Peccary leather is unique in its strength and character. In time the leather will assume a golden bloom, and acquire its own distinctly unique colour.
Beware, there are many imitation peccaries around, but the soft, almost buttery feel of the real thing is impossible to duplicate!
