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Leather facts - LEATHER BELONGS TO LIFE
content:
 Nature nearly pure
Leather is a natural product and brings some kind of nature also in your livingroom. Leather is produced from animal hides, and therefore it shows features of an individual living thing. Insect stings, thorn chaps and injuries leave traces on the hide of the animal which can only be covered partly in the manufacturing process of the leather. Nature cannot be retouched totally. These “injuries“ of the hide, indeed, indicate the natural origin of the covering material. A synthetically produced covering material can never give such an impression of nature. Moreover, nothing is more hygienic than leather - if it is treated right. Not for nothing leather is recommended as the covering material, e.g. for allergic people.
There is a long way from hide to leather…
For the upholstery leather manufacture preferably cowhides from mostly European breedings are used. They quite show above-mentioned natural features, however, by far less than hides from overseas, where animals live in the open-air. In the leather manufacturing process the raw hide is cracked in the tanneries after the first cleaning process to receive evenly thick leather. The resulting upper surface, the so-called grain split, shows the part which is mostly manufactured into upholstery leathers, the bottom surface, the so-called flesh split, is less used. After tannage, which means to preserve the raw animal hide, you have already received the material leather.
Leather is not leather
The individual features of the animal, which the leather bears inside, are one reason for the different further manufacturing steps within the leather production. However, also fancy trends and customer demands contribute to the fact that many ways have to be gone to receive the finished upholstery leather. Furthermore, there shall be made big quantities same looking leathers from different hides so that the furniture manufacturer can offer an uniform product to his customers. After a further cleaning step the leathers will be dyed in a dyeing process. The leathers are evenly dyed in the so-called drum dyeing, i.e. they are dipped into a colouring agent. After this dyeing, the different hides go now separate ways, and doing this, the nature of the hides plays again an important role…
Read part 2: Natural or pure aniline leather
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