My favorite leather to work with
At The Sho Room, my products are made from high quality vegetable tanned leather. What this means from your point of view (shoppers) is that the product you bought from me will last for a long time! (years!)
But what exactly is Veg tanned leather?
Read this minute article to learn a bit about the leather I use for your products.
Different types of leather
There are several types of different leathers and here are 2 that use for my craft.
Chrome tanned leather
Most of the leather products are made of what's called Chrome tanned leather.
They are generally thinner and softer, and comes with colours already embedded in the leather itself.
Because of the soft nature of the leather, they are more suitable for making furniture, shoes and more.
They are relatively cheaper than vegetable tanned leather and most of the leather products you see these days are made of Chrome tanned leather. (90%)
Chrome tanned leather will not age.
Veg tanned leather
Vegetable tanned leather oh the other hand, comes with natural colour of the leather only. It l has beige - pale cream sort of colour.
It is "tanned" by naturally occurring Tree bark and plant tannins. This is an ancient method for preserving leather.
Veg tanned leather can be tooled for leather carving, dyed into different colours and also suitable for moulding shapes.
They offer more options for handling which makes it more suitable for me to use.
They also have natural healing capacity so are easy to look after and keep it clean.
Veg tanned leather will 'age' its properties so colours develop deeper character and also it will absorb natural oil of human by handling.
This makes your product more unique and even more of one of a kind items.
The are easy to care, heavy duty and has a great amount of potential for making a lot of tooling projects and that is why it is my favourite material for my leather crafts.
Tio learn more about leather aging read this article.