Things happen for a reason. In Édgar Beltrán’s case, he got attacked by his soon-to-be passion from two fronts. On the one hand, his career in oil engineering and international business management caused him such physical and emotional exhaustion that he ended having to radically transform his life to protect his health. On the other, he just needed to look closely at the old-man briefcase his brother had given him when he was a child —the object from his past that he cherished the most— to understand that leather was what would bring him back to life.

Thus, in 2015 he decided to return to downtown Bogotá —a place he had not been to in decades— and started night school at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios Santo Domingo. Soon after, he began working during the day with his saddlery teacher, Mónica Tejada: he was desperate to learn everything there was to know about the trade. He knows he far exceeded the 10,000 hours of practice that every craftsperson supposedly needs to assert the mastery of their trade.

He is certain of this because he knows that, when he fixes his mind on something, nothing in the world can make him give up. Three years of full commitment —which seem like entire decades worth of knowledge and skills achieved through sheer passion, study, and practice— led him to fall in love with the craft’s main tools: its blades. He compares the virtuosity handling them to that of the barbers who know exactly when the contact between blade and skin is perfect.

He is fascinated by the different types of leather and their uses. He wishes to fine-tune both his touch and sight, as well as to completely understand how leather’s original whiteness gets toasted like the skin under the sun. He wants to grasp better than anyone how the different layers are separated to make suede and how to use thick leather and saddlery seams. He knows that he honors his art, which has changed little in thousands of years, by researching all of its nooks and crannies with such passion. Likewise, he mentions that this is also a way of paying tribute to the masters who still make saddles, which he believes to be the highest form of leatherwork: “galloping ergonomics,” as he calls them.

He founded Blu Marino with more than 100 high-end products that display his two passions: leatherwork and traveling. The wind rose is his logo because he follows it diligently. It has helped him enter the highly competitive international market of luxury ornamental wares for high-end hotels and restaurants.

He knows that every lamp, braided cushion, box made in the tajinería (or weaving) technique, briefcase, or wallet of his is a pleasure for anyone’s eye. These are products that will record the passage of time and create a connection with the past. Leather has in its grasp, ultimately, the power and sensuousness of affective memory.