The Leather Library

Vachetta Leather: What It Is and How It Ages

Vegetable tanned cowhide. The word names the tannage and the hide only; the finish is independent.

Top-Grain Leather: What It Is, and How It Compares

Taken from the outer layer with the surface sanded away. What that costs is the grain and any patina. What it does not cost is strength.

How Leather Is Made

Leather is animal hide chemically stabilised so it will not decay. That stabilisation is tanning.

How to Repair Scratches in Leather

Most scratches are not cuts. They are displaced fibre or a disturbed finish, and many can be worked away at home.

Leather Patina: What It Is and How It Forms

The record a leather keeps of the person carrying it. The only decoration in leather that cannot be bought, only earned.

Italian Leather: What It Is, and What the Term Guarantees

One of the most used phrases in the trade and one of the least defined.

Types of Leather: The Full Guide

Leather is described in four ways at once, and almost every argument about leather types comes from collapsing them into one.

Attaché Case: What It Is, and How It Differs From a Briefcase

A slim, rigid, hard-sided case built around a frame, opening flat into two shallow compartments.

Nappa Leather: What It Is, and Where the Name Comes From

A soft, fine-grained leather produced by an approach to tanning rather than by a grade or a finish.

Patent Leather: What It Is, and What It Is Not

Leather under a high-gloss film. The hide is real. The shine is not leather at all.

Mushroom Leather: What It Is and Where It Actually Stands

A material grown from mycelium, then pressed and finished into sheets. It is not leather, and its makers do not claim it is.

Buffalo Leather: Which Animal, and How It Compares to Cowhide

Buffalo leather means two different animals depending on who is speaking, and the confusion is built into the word.

Neatsfoot Oil on Leather: What It Does, and What It Does Not

The traditional leather dressing. It softens leather genuinely and it darkens it permanently.

The Saddle Stitch: How It Works and Why It Lasts

Made by hand with two needles working a single thread, crossing itself inside every hole along the seam.

Leather Conditioner and Oils: What Works, What Harms

Most household oils should not go anywhere near leather. Several turn rancid inside the fibre where you cannot get them out.

Genuine Leather: What the Term Actually Means

The least informative true thing a maker can say about a piece of leather.

What Is a Dopp Kit?

A small toiletry bag, usually leather, made to hold shaving equipment and washing things for travel.

Pebbled Leather: What It Is, and Whether It Is Real

A texture that can be the animal's own or pressed in with a heated plate. The repeat tells you which.

Aniline Leather: What It Is, and How to Tell

Coloured with transparent dyes and then left alone. The surface you touch is the leather itself.

Holdall, Duffel or Duffle: What the Words Mean

They are the same bag. Holdall is British; duffel and duffle are what it is called elsewhere.

Saffiano Leather: What It Is, and How It Is Made

A finish rather than a hide or a grade: a cross-hatch pressed into the surface with a heated plate.

How to Get Oil and Grease Out of Leather

Blot, never rub. Cover the mark in an absorbent powder, leave it for hours rather than minutes, brush it away, and repeat.

Soft Leather: What Makes Leather Soft

Softness comes down to how freely the fibre bundles inside the hide can move against each other.

Leather Grades Explained

Two entirely different grading systems, and the relationship between them is the most useful thing on the page.