Leather Profiles

Read all about our leathers and the benefits of vegetable tan leathers!

There can be a lot of confusion stirred up when buying leather goods, particularly bespoke leather goods.  Terms like veg tan leather, chrome tanned leather, full grain, top grain, patent, pull up etc, can have you scratching your head wondering where to begin.   Well, we are here to help you make the best choice when it comes your notebooks and leather goods bought from us here at Crazy organized!  So let’s break down the basics!

What is Veg tan vs chrome tan? 

At it’s most basic, leather craft starts with raw animal hides which are then tanned to create leather.  How this happens, depends widely on the tannery and their preferred method. 

The most commonly used methods are chemical tanning, typical chrome or alum tanning.  This method uses chemical salts, typically chromium or alum salts to tan the hides.  This method is the quickest, resulting in a tanned hide in only a day.  After the tanning process, colorants and finishes are applied to create the finished leather.  This method represents about 90 percent or more of all leathers on todays market. 

The second method, which is also The original and oldest method, is vegetable tanning.  This method uses plant matter, typically barks from specific trees, the facilitate the tanning process.  This process produces thicker, more artisan friendly leathers, and are prized for the rich leather aroma it imparts.  These leathers are the most expensive on the market because it takes a whopping 30 days of continuous labor just to tan one hide! 

Now lets talk about grains of leather.  

Here at Crazy Organized, we are proud to say we use only full grain vegetable tan leathers in our leather goods!  

When leather is created in the tannery, most often it is slimmed down to provide other products from the one hide.   This process is called splitting the leather.  Leather is typically split into three pieces, the top layer is cut away removing imperfections like branding, bites, cuts and scares, the top grain, which is the leather with those top imperfections removed, and the suede, which is the soft textured bottom of the hide.  This is where we get those terms when discussing leather.  So what then, is full grain?  Full grain represents a leather that has not been split, and remains one solid piece of leather with imperfections and all.  It is often the most sought after as it represents an unspoiled piece of leather that retains is own unique character.