MATERIALS WE LOVE: RAWHIDE

Rawhide’s Native American heritage does not limit this luxurious material to any one interior design style. While it often evokes the frontier culture of the American West, this material is exceedingly versatile. Rawhide can add distinctive character to a broad range of interiors — from traditional log & timber to ‘cowboy’ transitional to modern rustic.

Unlike shades commonly made from fabric, glass or acrylic, rawhide shades add texture and craft detail, and they diffuse light in a way that creates a wonderfully warm aesthetic. Here at Hammerton, we use this special material for more than just lamp and sconce shades. Leveraging rawhide’s exquisite light filtering effect, we use this material in several unexpected ways and incorporate it into a wide range of fixtures.

Using rawhide in lighting requires highly developed craft-based skills such as forming and lashing (stitching), but the artisans at Hammerton do not stop here. Our artisans also use rawhide as an artistic canvas and can sketch customer-specified scenes and objects to achieve a personalized, artistic look. They also creatively combine rawhide with wood, bronze and steel to achieve dynamic and intricate designs with extraordinary detail.