The studio
Formé, Abu Dhabi.
A paper and leather studio. Everything you might want to know about how these are made, on one page.
Made to be kept.
Formé makes leather and paper essentials for people who still write things down. We started with one question: why is almost everything on a professional's desk designed to be replaced?
The answer, mostly, is that replacement is a business model. Ours is the opposite — a cover you refill instead of rebuy, a notebook milled to outlast the year you write it in, and a clip machined from a metal that does not care about weather.
The A5 cover in Black, with the certificate that ships with it.
The leather
Minerva Liscio, from Badalassi Carlo.
Full-grain and vegetable-tanned in Tuscany: weeks in tannins drawn from tree bark rather than a day in chrome salts. The surface is the original hide, aniline-finished, so nothing sits between your hand and the leather.
It is supposed to change. It darkens where it is handled, lightens where it is stretched, and scratches burnish out under a thumb. A cover that reads olive in January reads bottle-green by June.
Every hide is a by-product of the food industry. Every piece ships with a certificate naming the leather and the studio that finished it.
The last stage — the seal card on the kraft mailer.
Our process
Tanned in Tuscany. Finished by hand here.
Eight stages between a hide arriving in a crate and a cover going into a mailer. None of it is unusual for good leatherwork; it is unusual to still be doing it at this price.
-
Selection and cutting
Panels are laid around scars and stretch zones rather than stamped out on a grid, then cut by hand — so the tightest leather ends up along the spine, where the cover flexes most.
-
Skiving and saddle stitch
Folds are pared down by hand so the cover closes flat. Seams are sewn with two needles through each hole, which is slower than a machine lockstitch and does not unravel when a stitch is cut.
-
Edges, four to six passes
Sand, paint, dry, burnish, repeat. The slowest part of the build and the first place a rushed leather good gives itself away.
-
Numbered, certified, packed
The Formé mark is pressed into the hide under heat — no ink, no foil, nothing to chip. Then a number, a certificate naming the leather, and a kraft mailer.
Care & warranty
How to look after it.
The short version. The full guide covers repairs, returns and shipping.
Leather
- Every day
- Use it. Handling is what builds the patina
- Marks
- Burnish with a thumb; most fade in
- Water
- Blot, air-dry away from heat, never a hairdryer
- Conditioning
- A neutral balm once or twice a year, no more
Paper and titanium
- Notebook
- Keep it in the cover; the leather is the protection
- Elastic
- Replaceable — write to us rather than binning the cover
- Clip
- Rinse and dry. There is no coating to wear through
Warranty
- Covered
- Stitching, hardware and construction, two years
- Not covered
- Patina, scratches and darkening — these are the material working
- Repairs
- Quoted at cost, for as long as we are open
- Full terms
- See Care & warranty
No harmful chemicals
Tanned with natural tannins drawn from bark, not chrome salts.
No animal raised for hide
Every hide is a by-product of the food industry.
Built to be repaired
Elastics and inserts are replaceable. The leather is not consumable.
Plainly
Who we are, without the adjectives.
Small studio, short range, long horizon.
The studio
- Location
- Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
- Discipline
- Paper and leather
- Made
- By hand, in-house
What we buy in
- Leather
- Badalassi Carlo, Tuscany
- Paper
- FSC®-certified, Italy
- Titanium
- CNC machined to our drawing
- Everything else
- Made here
See it in person.
Three objects that share a desk, made in the same studio by the same hands.