Vegetable Leather and Leather-making Process

Vegetable-tanned leather is tanned using tannins and other ingredients found in different vegetable matter, such as tree bark prepared in bark mills, wood, leaves, fruits, and roots. With this kind of making progress, the leather is eco-friendly and has no harm to human body as there are no any chemicals are used in the progress.

The regular way of leather-making is very different from vegetable-tanned leather. Before we get started on the making of vegetable-tanned leather, let's get to know about the regular progress of leather-making.

The progress of Leather-making

When the skins are taken from the animal, the raw skins must be processed, otherwise it will be rotted in few hours. The most common way is to use salt. The portion of the using salt weighted about 30-40% of the raw skin.

Then, it's the making of leather. The process can be divided into three sections, they are preparing, tanning and finishing. The tanning drum, an instrument that is used most frequently during the process. Soaking, fleshing, unhairing, bating, pickling, tanning and splitting conditioning, all these steps need to be done in the drum.

After the skin has been unhairing and tanning, it will become durable and not easy to deform. But it is still not a leather, not before the steps of conditioning, buffing and other finishing steps. In this progress, the collagen fibre of dermis has been fixed and straighten.

The differences of leather-making, the origin of the skin, factories or any other factors can make the leather's qualities become very different.

After the skin has been through all the processes, it will become durable, not easy to tear apart or disform but easy to keep and can be as new as the first moment it was made. They are now breathable, moisture wicking and drawing.

The Differences between Vegetable Leather and Other Leather

Vegetable-tanned leather is tanned using tannins and other ingredients found in different vegetable matter, such as tree bark prepared in bark mills, wood, leaves, fruits, and roots. So the leather is eco-friendly and has no harm to human body as there are no any chemicals are used in the progress. It is supple and brown in colour, with the exact shade depending on the mix of chemicals and the colour of the skin. It is the only form of leather suitable for use in leather carving or stamping.

Vegetable-tanned leather is not stable in water; it tends to discolour, so it is left to soak and then dried to shrink and becomes harder. This is a feature of oak bark tanned leather that is exploited in traditional shoemaking. In hot water, it shrinks drastically and partly congeals—becoming rigid, and eventually brittle. Boiled leather is an example of this, where the leather has been hardened by being immersed in hot water, or in boiled wax or similar substances. Historically, it was occasionally used as armour after hardening, and it has also been used for book binding.

Below is a list of items we have in store which are made of vegetable leather. Happy shopping!

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