MATERIALS WE USE
VEGETABLE TANNED LEATHER
Unbeknown to us when we started, the difference between regular leather and vegetable tanned leather is basically a lot of chemicals. Nasty chemicals.
In ancient times, vegetable tanning was all that was available – hides were steeped in a bath of vegetable-based extracts like leaves, bark, nuts etc, which release tannins.
This process was repeated several times, gradually increasing the strength of the mixture. Each time, the tannins penetrated the fibres in the hide deeper and deeper, ultimately creating what we all know as leather.
Although there’s a lot more to it than this brief description, today’s vegetable tanned leather essentially follows the same path. Our leather comes from the only remaining traditional oak bark tannery in Britain. The tannery mixes natural river water, oak from renewable sources and simply time dedicated to slow tanning, to preserve the natural weave of the fibres. This takes up to 3 months – all good things take time.
When you see a beautifully aged, 100 year old vintage leather wallet or Gladstone bag, chances are it was vegetable tanned – it truly wears in with the user, not out. There’s also a good chance it might have been made by the same people who’ve made our leather products. 100 year’s ago, they were already well established in the heart of English leather-land, Birmingham. Now they make Ian, Bob, Chris and Matt for us.
For the rest of our product, we were also lucky enough to find a high quality tannery literally 20 minutes away from our bag producers in Southern China. Although they’re developing a 100% vegetable tanned product at the moment (called wet-white), we chose their best option available today, 70% vegetable tanned.
This means that the hides arrive in the tannery as so-called wet-blue leather, already partly preserved with a chemical treatment. The remainder of the tanning process for our hides is vegetable based, overtaking the chemicals in the process and ultimately winning 70-30.
The result is the leather we’ve used as trim on our bags, straps, handles, logo patches etc. Where we feel the leather will be under pressure most, we’ve reinforced it with recycled polyester to make it even stronger.
All we’re waiting for now, is the move to their new wet-white leather, 100% vegetable tanned. Hopefully next year.
