Hands up for Irish gloves: Meet the Horn family, Ireland’s only specialist glovemakers

Seventy-eight-year-old Brian Horn remembers as a young teenager having to make more than 10,000 First Communion gloves from stretch nylon with pearl buttons, which had to be in the shops by March. “I will never forget it,” recalls Ireland’s master glove maker when we meet in the Horn company’s premises in Dublin’s Brunswick Street.

It is here, in what was an old woollen mill, that he and his son Gerard are reviving a traditional craft business founded by his father, George, almost 80 years ago. The Horns are now the only specialist glovemakers in Ireland. “You need highly skilled people and training used to be four years,” he explains.

George was an orphan and had apprenticed with Dents in his teens, learning his trade at the famous UK glovemakers before setting up in Dublin in the post war period. He was later joined by his 15-year-old son, Brian, in 1960. With a skilled workforce of 25 people, the 1960s was their heyday, supplying gloves to the likes of Christian Dior, Harrods, Bloomingdales and Saks, as well as dress gloves for the Irish army, An Garda Síochána and even motorcycle gauntlets.

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In the late 60s, the company had an annual turnover of €300,000. “We had been making for Michelin, which kept the whole factory going,” Brian explains, pointing out that speciality gloves with a greater fat content were needed to handle the French company’s famous pneumatic tyres, which had a special steel cord at the base so as not to rust it. At one point, he was making 220 dozen every week. He also produced gloves with waxed seams for fighter pilots, “which had to last 10 minutes in the sea,” he says. He was even asked to supply gloves to Nato.

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Tragedy struck in 1972 when on the day of Brian’s wedding, the factory burnt down and all 80 machines were destroyed. The company then moved to Prussia Street to another factory beside the cattle market building, continuing as the Castleknock Glove Company. With the advent of cheap imports, however, the production of dress gloves stopped and in 2003, the company was wound down. “It wasn’t easy to make money then when the trade went overseas,” says Gerard.

Now, he is overseeing a new era with his father. Having acquired specialist machinery from two UK glove companies closing down, the desire to start making gloves again grew stronger. “My interest has always been in gloves, and they were always part of my life,” says Gerard, who, after a period spent in New Zealand and a PhD in the history of Irish immigration to that country, decided to return home and get involved in the family business that now includes a company called the Dublin Leather Store.

With the specialised machinery and Brian’s own hard earned skills, he is now producing handmade gloves in 15 different styles for men and women, including historical ones. In their spacious premises, all of thedifferent coloured gloves are displayed on a big wooden table – some trimmed with buttons, others with Toscana sheepskin. Alongside them are shelves filled with a vast array of leathers including the specialist peccary hides made from South American wild boar which can only be handstitched, superfine aniline lamb nappa and a rare pale grey calf suede traditionally used with morning suits for men at Ascot. A pair of gloves in this leather was made by Brian for Gerard’s debs.

You learn a lot about the highly technical skills and experience needed to make just one pair of gloves on a visit to this factory: pique sewing, the hardest stitch to master in glove production; the points (Greek or Classic) vee shaped vertical stitching on the glove; the quirks, diamond shaped pieces of leather in the vee of the finger; French seams, in seams, out seams, flat seams. Meticulous precision skills are need to produce the fine seams on the sides of the fingers.

The job of some machines, like the overlocker, is specifically to produce tiny stitches and there are dies which are used to press out the leather patterns. Pressurised clicker press machines cut the leather to the required shape and different sized stencils are used to cut out the gloves. Glove irons carry out the final smoothing after stitching is completed.

The website has a useful guide on how to measure one’s hand for a glove and the company also offers a custom made service for those who want something special. “People have a bit more money now and appreciate good quality,” says Gerard.

“This is all about the handcraft and the skills and the importance of preserving those skills. We should be making things in this country because once you lose that ability, it is very difficult to get it back.”

What makes a good glove, he says, lies in the cutting – the leather must be supple and stretch horizontally rather than vertically. “Our gloves won’t stretch out of shape because of that.”

Brian adds that gloves can be made not only from leather but also other materials like satin or cotton but not woven fabrics because of their stretch limitations.

“You can make gloves from knitted fabric but it must not fray.” All the linings, mostly sourced from Italy, are in 100 per cent cashmere or silk. And, Gerard is starting to think about Irish deerskin, considered a waste product in this country.

Currently on an internship with the Horns is Siobhán Curtis from Monaghan, a Fine Arts student from NCAD. She is interested in leather and is working on a number of glove designs which may be considered for production. For Gerard, a third-generation Horn, the future lies in combining new technology with traditional skills and adding to their existing repertoire of designs.

“At a personal level, I feel an obligation to my dad and grandad. It also makes me feel that I’m keeping a connection to those earlier generations. The other aspect to it appeals to the divil in me. For years, people have been telling us that we’re mad trying to manufacture in Ireland, that it would be easier and more profitable to have the gloves made elsewhere but I’m quite contrary so there is nothing I get more pleasure from than chipping away at that old orthodoxy one pair of gloves at a time.”

Horn gloves for ladies and gents can be found online at georgehorn.ie; Kennedy & McSharry, Powerscourt Townhouse Centre, Dublin; Joyce’s of Recess in Connemara; and Rosalins, Dunville Avenue, Ranelagh, Dublin 6. Prices from €75.