Stahl train students in leather finishing
26 April 2011In mid-March Frans van den Heuvel led his first Stahl leather finish training course for students at the Institute of Creative Leather Technologies (ICLT), part of the University of Northampton, UK. Van den Heuvel described the students as ‘like seeds planted in a shower of rain’. This is because, although students may be reluctant to react to others around them at the beginning of a course, as time goes by they gradually melt to play a more reactive part. Eventually this new-found willingness to discuss ideas with colleagues, he believes, will lead to them becoming decision makers of the leather industry in time to come.
Out of this knowledge, students will begin to create their own ideas for starting points and developing a finish. This is the skill that enables the students to return to their tannery and create finishes based on the Stahl products used during training.
The March course at ICLT (formerly known as BSLT) is a two-week course. Although every day is different each follows a pattern of one hour of theory by the rest of the day being spent on practical training that relates to their work in their tannery, a very important relationship between training and its application to subsequent workplace involvement.
Also to assist the relationship between the training course and the workplace, van den Heuvel brings with him examples from Stahl’s Road Show collection, examples of the ‘hot items’ that are specially featured every month and some real life items.
A similar course has been run by Stahl’s Jac Daamen also at the ICLT but covering wide ranging aspects of retanning.
