A dying profession: one of the last specialist glove makers

By Silke Katenkamp Jan 5, 2012, 3:06 GMT

Magdeburg, Germany - Glove maker Claus Schmidt recalls a story of one of his more special customers: 'He had enormous hands. They were so big that they hardly fit onto an A4 sheet of paper.'

The man asked Schmidt to make him a pair of gloves. 'They were the first pair of gloves that he had ever owned.'

Schmidt frequently has requests like that. The 78-year-old has been making bespoke gloves for his clients for more than 50 years at his workshop in Magdeburg in Germany.

He has all types of customers but many of them have hands that are of the less common variety: very large hands, hands with missing fingers or fingers that are of unusual sizes. A few of his customers have hands that are so sensitive that they cannot wear mass-produced gloves.

Schmidt is probably the only glove maker in Germany who has specialised in unusual hands.

'We don't know of anyone else who does it,' says Manuela Schneemann, who works for a Berlin company that sells orthopaedic equipment.

Her business is among 300 companies in Germany that place orders with Schmidt. Her clients have damaged their hands is traffic or workplace accidents or have had fingers amputated due to illness.

'Gloves for hands like those have to fit perfectly and be very well made,' says Schmidt. 'If a glove is too tight or causes friction, then it can hurt the wearer.'

Schmidt is standing in his workshop in Magdeburg, wearing his black apron. He is holding a moist, black piece of lamb leather as big as a bathroom mat, with which he plans to make a pair of ladies' gloves for a woman who lost the small finger on her right hand.

He begins as if he was making any bespoke pair of gloves, as glove makers have been doing for hundreds of years. The job requires physical strength as Schmidt stretches the lamb leather over a block of wood and sprinkles talcum powder over it.

'The powder allows me to see the places on the leather that have been damaged,' he says. Those are the spots where the lamb injured itself while it was alive. 'You have to look very carefully. Nobody wants a pair of gloves with damaged areas.'

Depending on how well they're made, the lining and the decoration, a pair of gloves can cost up to 200 dollars (144 euro).

'That's the top end for real glove fans,' says Schmidt. The average price is about 60 dollars a pair.

Women prefer gloves made of soft lamb leather or fine goat leather while men often choose leather made from deer.

Schmidt and his father opened the workshop in Magdeburg, in what was then East Germany, in 1955.

Glove makers were relatively common at the time and many of them were based in the town of Johanngeorgestadt in eastern Germany. With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 their fortunes declined as cheaper mass-produced gloves arrived from the West.

'Most glove makers didn't survive,' says Schmidt. Glove making is slowly dying out in Germany and there are only about 12 glove makers in the country who produce custom-made gloves.

Being a profession in decline also has less obvious disadvantages.

'No more tools are available on the market,' says Schmidt, standing in front of a large press that cuts finger shapes from leather. 'This press was built during the time of Emperor Wilhelm.' His scissors for cutting leather are 60-years-old.

Schmidt picks up the scissors and makes small cuts in a piece of leather that will form the areas between the fingers in the finished pair of gloves. Gloves are either sewn together by hand by a seamstress or completed on a sewing machine in Schmidt's workshop.

However, the gloves are still far from finished at that stage. Before they can be worn they have to be 'trained' first. That's the term used by glove makers when the gloves are pulled onto a hot piece of iron. Not until then do the gloves have their final shape.

Schmidt makes about 800 pairs of gloves a year.

'In the past I used to work all day,' he says. 'But I can't do that anymore.'

Schmidt has sat down on a stool, tired from working. He planned to retire six years ago but he still hasn't managed to put his tools down for the last time.

'I'll probably stop in two years,' he says. He doesn't yet know if anyone will take over his workshop when he retires.