TALKING ABOUT LEATHER

Leather is one of nature's most versatile materials. It offers comfort and durability in a variety of beautiful finishes, textures and colors. The way it makes you look good and feel good like any luxurious item should. Leather is more versatile than fur, hipper than cashmere, cheaper than diamonds. It doesn't wrinkle much, so it's the perfect travel partner.

How it is made

Prehistoric and primitive peoples preserved pelts with grease and smoke and used them chiefly for shoes, garments, coverings, tents, and containers.

Today pelts are prepared for tanning by dehairing, usually with lime, followed by fleshing and cleaning. After tanning, leather is generally treated with fats to assure pliability. The practice of shaving leather to the required thickness was abandoned early in the 18th cent. After the invention of a machine that split the tanned leather into a flesh layer and a grain (hair-side) layer; skivers are thin, soft grains used for linings and for covering firm surfaces.

Characteristic grains may be brought out by rubbing, as in morocco leather (goatskin), or may be imitated by embossing. Finishes include glazing, a high glaze being achieved by rolling with glass cylinders; coloring with stains or dyes; enameling or lacquering as for patent leather; and sueding, buffing with emery or carborundum wheels to raise a nap, usually on the flesh side. Russia leather, originally vegetable-tanned calfskin dressed with birch oil that imparted a characteristic odor and often dyed red with brazilwood, is a term now covering a number of variants. Rawhide is similar to parchment (untanned skin of animals, especially of the sheep, calf and goat, prepares for use as a writing material.) and is untanned. Cordovan, or Spanish, leather, soft colored leather made at Cordoba during the middle Ages and often richly modeled and gilded, is imitated for wall coverings, panels, and screens.

Leather is much used in bookbinding (the art and business of bookbinding began with the protection of parchment manuscripts with boards.).

Artificial leather, made since about 1850, was originally a strong fabric coated with a rubber composition or with a synthetic substance such as pyroxylin. Since World War II, materials made from vinyl polymers have far outstripped the earlier artificial leathers in commercial importance

Kinds of Skin

Not sure how to distinguish between nubuck and suede? Think "100% leather is all you need to know?

Leather: Skin or hide of animals, cured by tanning ( tanning process by which skins and hides are conveted into leather).
Full Grain: The original, unaltered hide which has had the hair removed. Shows the full grain of animal. Hight quality.
Lambskin: Leather from the skin of a young sheep.
Kidskin: Leather from a young goat.
Calfskin: Fine leather made from the hide of a calf.
Cowhide: The leather made from a mature cow.
Pigskin - Leather made from the skin of a pig.
Shearling: The skin of a shearling or of a newly sheared sheep or lamb, tanned and with the wool on.
Suede - Leather with a soft napped surface. The flesh side (underside)of the leather is buffed to produce a nap.
Cordovan. A fine leather originally made of goatskin but now more frequently of split horsehide. It is produced with vegetable dyes and results in a very hight quality piece ( usually shoes) that have and always polished look.
Embossed: A pattern that is applied using extreme pressure to leather. Often this produces the look of another type skin (crocodile, alligator, ostrich, etc)
Split: The hide is sliced into pieces to give uniform thickness and the inside (flesh side) is finished as suede.
Nubuck: is top-grain cattle rawhide leather that has been sanded or buffed on the grain side, or outside, to give a slight nap of short protein fibers, producing a velvet-like surface.
Patent: is leather that has been given a high gloss, shiny finish. The gloss finish is produce by oils, varnish and resin. Modern patente leather usually has a plastic coating.

Tips

The less the skin has been treated (dyed, corrected, etc) the higher the quality of the piece.
In general, the softer the hand, the higher the cost.
Leather should look natural, smell good and have a great hand (feel great when you touch it).
Full grain leather is the highest quality, split leather is the cheapest.