Gaydon, Warwickshire - It's a fact of life that leather, being a natural material, comes in irregular shapes and sizes, and not all of every hide can be used.
Which means that, inevitably, the bespoke trim shop of a luxury car maker produces a lot of off-cuts. The bigger pieces are kept to use for repairs, smaller bits are used to make keyrings, wallets and similar branded merchandise - but a lot of odd-shaped scraps are simply that - scrap. Very expensive scrap.
But the trim-shop craftsmen at Aston Martin's Gaydon headquarters are good at thinking outside the box - or bin, in this case; they put down a big canvas in the atrium of the building and gave a group of young artisans a big pile of off-cuts.
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The result was, quite literally a work of art, a huge wall hanging depicting an Aston Martin Vanquish, executed in a dozen shades of leather. Not only did it touch the technicians a lot about matching subtly different pieces of the same hide to achieve the desired effect, the company may just have discovered a lucrative form of recycling.
A number of Aston Martin enthusiasts have commented on social media that they would like to buy a smaller version of the same leather artwork - perhaps representing their own car - to hang in their own home or office.