Hide Club
Hide Club is our online
Hide Tanning season
Hide Club is a comprehensive, live + recorded, online program.
You receive a materials kit with hides + ingredients in the mail (or provide your own). We meet over Zoom weekly or biweekly for two months. You are guided into the craft, receive mentorship for each hide project, and learn in a group setting.
Zoom calls are recorded + posted in an online space, alongside written how-to notes, photos, and special side-quests. You have access to this online space for a year after your Hide Club program closes (new as of October, 2024!).
And one of the best parts of Hide Club - the one we get the most praise for - is the WhatsApp group chat. Join a cohort of other tanners with varying levels of experience + learn from your peers through observation, sharing stories and photos, and get troubleshooting questions in real time.
NEXT LIVE PROGRAM INTAKE
HAPPENING NOW: Join us for SPECIALIZED Smoke-tanning 2025
May - June
Resource + Recording Spaces Available
Access the Resource Space for SPECIALIZED Bark-tanning 2024
Access the Resource Space for FOUNDATIONS 2025
We offer three separate Hide Club programs:
(1) FOUNDATIONS: a tour into each of the 3 methods of tanning (smoke-, bark-, mineral-)
Runs live February - March
Doors open November the year prior
The recording library can be purchased anytime 6 months after the live program
(2) SPECIALIZED I: a deep dive on the smoke-tan method, tanning multiple hide types
Live program runs May -June
Doors open March the year prior
The recording library can be purchased anytime 6 months after the live program
(3) SPECIALIZED II: a deep dive on the bark-tan method, tanning multiple hide types
Live program runs September - October
Doors open July the year prior
The recording library can be purchased anytime 6 months after the live program
And every once in a while we offer:
(4) Hide Club: CRAFT: a program to teach you how to make stuff with the hides you tan
Live program runs periodically, typically in November
Program length is 2-4 weeks
We provide tanned hides for purchase or provide your own
Some past projects include drums, lanterns, buckskin bags, and leather pouches
HOW It Works
Step 1: Sign up.
Choose your live program - next one is SPECIALIZED Smoke-tanning in May - June, 2025 where we are tanning fishksin leather, a sheepskin rug, and a buckskin cloth.
Step 2: Decide to bring your own hides/tools or order from Fern + Roe.
Each cohort has a bespoke materials kits with the the hides + ingredients to match our projects that season - plus a few special gems thrown in to help beginner tanners
If you bring your own hides, check with us to make sure they are fitting substitutes. For example, a goathide is a relative substitute for a deerhide.
See our recommended tool list to get a sense of what tools you’ll want
Step 3: Access your online account.
As soon as you sign up, you have access to the online space where we’ll have pre-recorded how-to videos, equipment-making videos, and intros to hide tanning - all before the program begins! This helps orient new hide tanners to the craft so you can jump right in when the season opens.
Step 4: Make time in your calendar
Each Hide Club schedule is posted before the program begins. Check out the schedule + set aside the time needed, whether you go to the live calls or follow along thru recordings. You will be tanning on your own some beyond just the two-hour calls (hide tanning takes time!)
Two weeks before the program starts, we send out Google Calendar invites to set reminders for each live call.
What we’re tanning
in Hide Club: SPECIALIZED: Smoke-tanning 2025
SHEEPSKIN RUG
FISHSKIN LEATHER
BUCKSKIN CLOTH
Hide Club: FOUNDATIONS
General Program Overview
New to hide tanning? Tried it on your own and got totally stuck? Or have you heard a ton of conflicting information and don’t know the principles yet to assess what you hear? You belong in FOUNDATIONS. We give you a roadmap to hide tanning: the principles of the craft, the why-we-do-it-this-way + the here’s-where-you-can-play. We guide you step-by-step in building simple at-home equipment (a scraping beam and a softening frame). AND, we of course…tan hides!
Hide Club: SPECIALIZED
General Program Overview
If you’re ready for a deep dive on chemistry, extra steps in the process, and doing your own experimental projects (like natural dyeing) ~ we offer SPECIALIZED for Smoke-tanning and SPECIALIZED for Bark-tanning.
The same guided mentorship as FOUNDATIONS, with a focus on one hide tanning method at a time. Get acquainted with the craft you love on a deeper level + gain experience to build your skillset.
Use the arrows left <- or right -> to see hide tanning in action
What Hide Club Alumni say…
Hide Club Guest Speakers
A big part of Hide Club is our guest speakers. We invite hide tanners and hide-adjacent friends to drop in on a live call + speak for an hour or two about what they do.
As a Hide Club participant, you get a view into the wide variety of hide tanning practices, hearing directly from experienced tanners. We’ve also hosted farmers, hunting instructors, craftspeople, and a knife sharpening expert - all skills and modalities that are part + parcel to hide tanning.
Scroll down to see some of the great people who’ve shared their perspective with Hide Club.
If you’d like to recommend or be a guest speaker, email us.
Adele Maskwa Iskwew Arseneau
Adele ᒪᐢᑿᓱᐤᐏᐢᑵᐤ Arseneau is a disabled Nehiyaw/Michif multidisciplinary artist who creates bespoke works for galleries, private collections, and public art commissions. With over 40 years of lived experience in her culture, she is a recognized knowledge keeper and a current Elder-in-Training.
Adele’s artwork is deeply grounded in storytelling, a practice through which she engages audiences by weaving connections to cultural, social, and environmental issues. This approach is a reflection of her family’s way of teaching and sharing knowledge. Displaced from her family’s traditional territory in Northern Saskatchewan, Adele was raised among the Dakelh (Carrier) people in Prince George and Fraser Lake, British Columbia.
This unique upbringing influenced her artistic journey, moving her away from the traditions of her adopted family towards those of her biological heritage.
Amber Sandy
Amber Sandy is a member of Neyaashiinigmiing (Chippewas of Nawash First Nation) residing in Robinson Huron Treaty territory. Amber is an artist, hide tanner, and advocate for Indigenous knowledge and science. Her work aims to braid Indigenous knowledge and western science in her approach to conservation, environmental science, education and art. Amber is passionate about increasing access to traditional land based practices for Indigenous people.
Beze Gray
Beze Gray (they/ them/ theirs) is a Two-Spirit, trans, non binary Anishnaabe/Lunaape/Onieda from Aamjiwnaang First Nation. Beze’s main focuses in life are Language, Cultural revitalization and being a Two Spirit youth advocate for environmental racism and injustices their community Aamjiwnaang faces. They are a land and water protector speaking out about Canada's petrochemical industry and its impacts on the waters, lands and people of the Great Lakes.
Beze started out learning hunting and making rawhide in their Lunaape community in Moraviantown. They learned from Uncles how to harvest from the deer and process a raw hide. Since then, Beze was one of the youth apprentices from the 2020 Niizh Manidook Hide Camp and learned to fully soften and complete a hide to smoked Buckskin. They learned from different nations and received guidance on hide tanning from Metis, Lunaape, Dene, and Cree teachings.
Medicines from the Land website | Niizh Manidook Hide Camp website | instagram
Carman McKay
Carman McKay is an artist, educator, life skills facilitator, drum maker and cultural resource from the City of Vancouver, raised in Cultus Lake, BC. Carman studied drum-making and drum teachings for ten years with Paiute Elder Hidden Wolf. His drums are a synthesis of his Prairie teachings and his coastal heritage. Well-travelled across the continent, McKay has learned from elders and studied the interconnection of the physical and spiritual realms.
Christel Lanthier
Christel Lanthier is a Franco-Manitobaine and of Red-River Métis descent, Shepherdess and Maman of 3, caring for land with her family in Treaty One Territory.
Christel has been exploring and playing around with the world of textile farming and processing since 2016 when the family brought home their first sheep. Tanning Sheepskins and deer hides, as well as collecting deer hides for community is where most of her time is spent in the fall. Living on open land provides her with the opportunity to feed her creative exploration and expression, learning and processing - through her camera, textiles, plants and food.
Daniel Stermac-Stein
Daniel is a craftsperson and maker of naturally-tanned leather goods. He lives in rural Ontario where he operated The Herd’s Throne Tannery.
The Herd’s Throne The Herd's Throne is a very small tannery and sewing studio attached to a farm in the Upper Ottawa Valley of Eastern Ontario. This is where he makes clothing and leather goods from bark-tanned and brain-tanned locally hunted and farmed skins. Everything employed in the tannery is turned into compost once spent, part of a healthy farm.
Hunter Cascagnette
Hunter Cascagnette (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist, harvester, herb grower & herbalist based in Manidoo Minising, Manitoulin Island, Ontario.
Hunter’s visual art practice is centered around naturally dyed deer rawhides, traditional brain tanning of deer & moose hides, antler work & the intersections between plant medicine, trees & hides.
Hunter teaches hide tanning for hire & sells their handcrafted smoke-tan hides & rawhides through their small business Medicines From The Land.They are a co-founder & hide tanning mentor with Niizh Manidook Hide Camp.
Attending hide camps has profoundly impacted Hunter’s hide tanning journey & practice. They are dedicated to continuing to learn & share knowledge about this rich ancestral artform.
Medicines from the Land website | Niizh Manidook Hide Camp website | instagram
Janey Chang
Janey Chang (she/her) is a Fish Skin Tanner + Revivalist, Mother + Human Being on a path of remembering how to be human and alive through the (re)learning of ancestral skills. She is a first generation Chinese Canadian woman living on the traditional lands of the Skwxwú7mesh and Tsleil-Waututh (otherwise known as North Vancouver, BC), where the majestic mountains meet the boundless ocean.
The influence of her teachers and mentors has encouraged her to explore her own cultural heritage through her work. The complex layers of her sense of identity are in a constant state of unraveling as she explores connections to her own human-ness and ancestral heritage. She tells stories through her art using materials from nature, with a focus on right relationship with the natural environment and her love for salmon. She specializes in transforming discarded salmon skins into exquisite pieces of fish skin leather, a practice that embodies sustainability and cultural reclamation.
Matt Richards
Matt is the co-tanner behind Traditional Tanners based in Oregon, USA. Traditional Tanners’ mission is to help accelerate the world's transition to clean, natural leather tanning
They work to re-popularize traditional, natural tanning methods that use plant tannins, woodsmoke, alum, and natural oils to help accelerate the tanning industry's transition away from chrome and other toxic chemicals. More Superfund sites are old tanneries than any other industry, even nuclear. We were certified organic in 2007.
Traditional Tanners provide instructional guides, tools, classes and online articles so that home tanners can learn these methods. They also work with established tanneries to help them transition.
Peter Ananin
Peter Ananin is the Founder and Master Tanner at Woodland Tannery, a Traditional Tannery based in the Highlands of Perthshire, Scotland.
Woodland Tannery produces heritage leathers, provides educational traditional craft courses and hosts Scottish Craft events. The tannery relies on the use of natural materials such as oak and willow bark sourced locally from rural Estates. It employs only natural materials and traditional methods. Its goods have been featured in the TV series and advertisements as well as museums and art galleries across Europe.
Sydney Pickering
Sydney Frances Pickering is a member of Lil’wat nation. She is currently living and working on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.
Her multi-disciplinary practice includes hide tanning, video, sound, and poetry. She uses her practice to tell her family’s story, speak about identity and what it is like navigating as an Indigenous person within a colonial society. Her work over the past few years is grounded by her continued connection to land-based material practices.
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