The Beginnings

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Rod and Lou Boyes of Pinegrove Leather

Welcome to Pinegrove Leather.  Pinegrove is a small leathercraft workshop in rural Shropshire, England*.    We're serious about our work, our leather and our quality.  From the original design to the finished strap or case, our attention to detail is second to none.  All products are hand-built in small batches in our own workshop.  There are no production lines or conveyor belts.  There's no huge warehouse, in fact, there's no warehouse at all.

We hand-pick all our leather to make sure it's high quality and exactly what we need for the product.  It's expensive, but then it's been through a long careful process to be as good as it is.  So, we don't want to waste any.  We're careful.  We make sure the finished product is right.    

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Rod Boyes (guitar) with his band The 309s

Owner Rod Boyes is not only a serious leather crafter, he's also a musician and songwriter.  Rod currently plays guitar and harmonica in Americana band The 309s, and his musical history goes back more than 30 years.  He started out playing bass in a punk band, switched to bluegrass guitar, then later Cajun and Western Swing.  He applies the same detailed attention to his music as he does to his leatherwork.  It's got to be perfect.

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The original harmonica case that seeded the creation of Pinegrove Leather

In 2012 Rod decided to mix his musical experience with his design and craft abilities and launched Pinegrove Leather.   Previously he had been dissatisfied with the cases for harmonicas, which were either mass-produced and synthetic, or custom-made and beyond his wallet.  So he designed his own.  This was widely admired and a seed was sown.   The Pinegrove name comes from a well known Cajun song, The Pine Grove Blues by Nathan Abshire, a favourite from Rod's 10-year spell in a Cajun band.

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Cajun accordion genius Nathan Abshire recording Pine Grove Blues, 1949.
Attribution: The Louisiana Endowment. Pine Grove Press.

All the products in the Pinegrove collection are design originals.  Every one has had a long succession of tested prototypes behind it.   Design improvements continue throughout a product's lifetime, as we value and respond to customer feedback.   

*In April 2021 we moved from Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire to Church Stretton in Shropshire for family reasons.

 
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