Chosen over freedom
You never forget your first bird of prey. “Mine was a Harris hawk, which my dad gave to me when I was eleven years old,” says Ashley Clarke, the craftsman behind A Clarke Falconry.
“I was captivated by the intense bond you form. When you fly the bird, it’s free, and it chooses to come back to you – yes, for food, but there’s more going on there,” he says. “That bird is looking outward and using you as a perch, while you’re flushing the game for it, and it knows the best position to be in is with you.”
Many birds are ‘flown’ by falconers, especially falcons like the plucky merlin and the aerobatic kestrel, and hawks including the feisty goshawk and the awesome golden eagle. Each species needs particular keeping and interaction – and each individual bird has its character, which won’t always gel with the falconer’s.
“Getting that relationship right feels really good, because it doesn’t work half the time,” says Ashley. “You’ve got the bird’s personality, mood and weight to take into consideration, so a lot has to fall into place.”
From Falconry to furniture
As Frank Illingworth writes in his classic handbook, ‘Falcons and Falconry’ (1948), “The first emphasis in falconry is to have necessary equipment on hand before your falcon or hawk arrives”.
A falconer needs several specialist items for each bird, such as jesses, anklets, food pouches, swing lures and tail guards. These items are collectively known as furniture. Like many falconers who started out in the 1990s and earlier, Ashley made much of his own falconry furniture.
“My dad would teach me how to make jesses and anklets – the basic things for the birds,” he says. “We had a cutting board and a Stanley knife, we’d buy squares of leather via postal order, and I’d sit there at the kitchen table and make things.”
After graduating from agricultural college, Ashley found work as a falconer, showing birds at public events. During the downtime between flights, he started making and selling falconry furniture as a side hustle. “It very quickly grew and grew, and I soon got my own website and moved away from flying birds professionally,” he says.
Today, A Clarke Falconry is among the UK’s leading suppliers of falconry equipment, providing furniture to customers who range “from royalty to the man down the street”. The items are handmade at a leatherworking workshop in Grantham, where Ashley also crafts leather goods such as bags, belts and card wallets.
Fit to fly
In the diverse sequence of tasks Ashley carries out to craft falconry furniture, selecting the leather comes first. He explains: “The leathers are not uniform like a fabric. You might have a deer that’s gone under a barbed wire fence and scratched its back, and you can’t put that leather into a glove. So, you have to select the suitable areas of the leather, and work around the faults in the hide.
“A lot of it is done by touch, because you can’t see right through the leather. You’ll get it on the press, you’ll feel through, and then you select the area, get your knife pattern on there, and cut out the furniture components.”
Certain parts are then thinned down using a skiving machine, before Ashley moves on to constructing the furniture. “First you glue certain areas, and then you sew the pieces together, before trimming off any excess material,” says Ashley.
“If there’s any personalisation to be done – whether that’s a royal crest or initials – you do that next. And finally, the glove is stitched closed and finished with binding.”
Falconry furniture must be well-fitting, so there is practically no margin for error in Ashley’s craft. “The leather we use has to be exact to .1 of a millimetre”, he says.
“Take the anklets for example: if you add half a millimetre, it affects the circumference around the bird’s legs, making the anklet too tight or too loose.”
A very special commission
Ashley uses a fascinating array of tools in his work, including rotary hole punches; Leatherman multitools; and bespoke knives for cutting leather pieces, which Ashley designs for himself using CAD software.
We were honoured to add a tool of our own to this impressive inventory: a variant of the Turton Kitchen Scissors, specially adapted for leatherworking.
“When I’m trimming leather on gloves and bags, I’ll run scissors along it to trim away the excess. But when the points are sharp, they cut into the leather and ruin it. So, Ernest Wright filed down the points for me,” says Ashley.
“They’ve also taken the bottle opener off – I didn’t need it, because I don’t drink. And they took the serration off the blades so that the scissors will cut leather more smoothly,” he says.
The outcome: a one-of-a-kind Turton, with a rare and inspirational purpose.
The making of a Falconer
According to Ashley, falconry has much to offer all sorts of people – provided they can commit the proper time and care.
“Anybody can do it, although it’s best suited to people who are largely on their own, just them and the bird,” he says. “I’m not flying at the moment, because I have children at home and a business to run. I wouldn’t be getting the best out of it, and it wouldn’t really be fair on the bird.
“But for the right person, it’s a great thing to be part of. The relationship is all-encompassing, and you can’t really do or think about anything else. It changes a person.”
Falconry is not to be undertaken lightly. However, if you’re seriously considering getting a hawk or falcon, you can access the information you need by contacting your local branch of the British Falconers’ Club. Established falconers can find Ashley’s hand-crafted falconry furniture via A Clarke Falconry.
