Cornelia James

We are glove makers. That is really all we do. But we try to do it really well and we have been doing it for a long time. We do it because we think that gloves are important and because a good pair of gloves is a thing of joy. You may be surprised to learn that there are 2.5 meters (that’s 8 foot) of stitching in a pair of gloves and at Cornelia James we have spent over 70 years trying to make each stitch perfect.

Some of the machinery that we use is quite old. Our gloves are die cut using a manually operated lever press made by WH Hallett & Sons of Yeovil, Somerset over 100 years ago. We’re not sentimental about it – we use it because it does the job very effectively and, when it’s not actually cutting gloves, it’s completely silent; a large and brooding presence in the cutting room.

Our Singer sewing machines are of the epoch when such machines were still made in the USA and our button hole machine is a Pfaff – made in Germany and the best you could get in 1957 when it was purc…