Leather Accessories  »  Leather Glossary

Alum Tanning
A process of tanning with alum, used in combination with salt, egg yolk and other substances. Used for the original feathery golf balls.

Aniline Leather
Leather which retains its color only from dyestuffs rather than from pigment and as a consequence looks more natural.

Bag and case leather
A general term for the leathers used in traveling bags and suitcases. It does not include the light leathers employed for women's fancy handbags. The staple material for bag and case leather is cowhide.

Bag Leather
A form of vegetable tannage in which the skins are sewn together in pairs to form bags and floated in tan liquor. This method avoids drawn grain and gives good spread of leather.

Belt leather
Leather used for the leather going into men's clothing belts.

Belting leather
Leather employed for the transmission of power for machinery. The great bulk of this leather is made from the butts of high-grade cattle hides. In Europe a certain amount of buffalo hide is also used.

Bougie Leather
Leather from the town of Bougie in North east Algeria. Famous in the fifteenth century.

Box Calf or box sides
Calf or side leather which has been boarded in two directions.

Cabretta Leather
A wrongly named hair sheep. When the Portuguese first went to Brazil they mistook the indigenous hairsheep for goats and called them cabrettas (kids). Now all hairsheep skins have taken the generic name cabretta. Much used in footwear leather and sport glove leather.

Carding Leather A special type of side leather used on the cards of cotton machinery. The leather lies flat against the beds of the cards, the teeth being forced through.

Chamois leather
A soft leather originally made from the skins of the Alpine antelope known as the chamois but at the present time from the fleshers of sheepskins. Certain grades used to be used in gloves and fancy articles but the staple employment is for cleaning and polishing, primarily automobile. Chamois is characterized by an ability to absorb at least three times its own weight of water.

Combing leather
The name applied to the leather used on the combing rolls of cotton machinery and manufactured of calfskin or side leather.

Cordovan Leather
Made from the skin of the mouflon (Ovis Musimom). This hair sheep now only survives in Corsica and Sardinia. It was tanned with alum and later with alum (Koninklijke Bibliotheek says sumac was not introduced until the 15 th century). Best brilliant scarlet type was tawed with alum and dyed with kermes.

Drenching
A process for reducing the plumped fibers of a hide or skin. It accomplishes approximately the same purpose as bating and basically in the same way - that is, through soaking in a fermenting solution. Some authorities, however, restrict the term bating to the process using ferments of manures and the term drenching to that using damp sawdust, bran, middlings, or a solution of lactic acid or some other chemical having a similar action.

Full grain leather
Leather whose grain has not been sandpapered or buffed to hide defects.

Glove Leather
A self-explanatory term which, however, covers two rather distinct classes: the leather going into utilitarian or work-gloves and made of a variety of hides and skins, of which the most important are horsehides, cattlehide splits, calfskins and pigskins; and the leather going into dress-gloves, including those for street, riding, driving, and sports wear. the latter is tanned predominately from sheep and lambskins; but there is a considerable item made of deerskin and a small one of pigskin, while an important item for the highest grades of women's fine gloves is tanned in a few countries of Europe from kidskins.

Heavy Leathers
A term distinguishing sole leather, belting leather, and harness leather proper from other classes which are referred to collectively as light leathers.

Helvetia Leather
Oil tanned hide from which not all the excess grease is removed.

Hydraulic leathers
A collective term sometimes used for the cattle hide leathers, chiefly rawhide and combination tannage, employed in pump valves, as piston packing, oils seals and so forth. In the hair; in the wool; in the raw A group of more or less equivalent terms used to describe stock that has not yet undergone any of the processes of leather manufacture.

Painting
A process for loosening hair or wool (usually the latter) which is employed with skins whose protective covering is so valuable as to make it desirable to avoid injuring it by soaking in a lime liquor. The process is carried out by painting the flesh side of a skin with a depilatory substance, containing sodium sulphide or arsenic. Nowadays this is the usual method with sheepskins bearing the higher grades of wool. Before it was invented, such skins were usually dehaired by sweating.

Pickling
A preliminary process for preparing hides and skins for tanning, largely by adjusting the pH with acid and controlling the swelling with salt. It is also use as stable way of holding material, after unhairing, for transport between plants and countries and for trading.

Re tanning
A process subsequent to the main tannage when the character of the leather is adjusted by the addition of further alternate types of tanning material. Thus synthetic or vegetable tans may be added to a chrome leather to adjust certain characteristics.

Rolling
One of the final operations in the manufacture of sole leather, by which it is given a smooth surface and even thickness.

Russia Leather
Leather characterised by its odour. "Anglo Russias" are skins treated with birch tar oil to imitate the smell of Russia leather. “The Russians have manufactured for a long time a variety of red leather called Juncten. This leather has an agreeable and characteristic odor, does not mould even in damp places, and is not attacked by insects.

Side Leather
Large hides are cut in half down the backbone to make them easier to handle in the tannery. Each piece is called a side. Most shoe leather made from cattle hides is produced as side leather, while most upholstery leather produced from hides is processed as whole hides. Increasingly the cutting of hides into sides is done after tanning, at the wet blue stage.

Skirting leather
A specialised cattlehide leather used for the skirts or hanging portions of saddles that come between the legs of the rider and a horse's flanks.

Skivers
The grain of the wool sheepskin when it has been split in order to prepare a suede leather for manufacture into chamois leather. Normally tanned with vegetable materials for use as in shoe lining, bookbinding or leather goods.

Strop Leather
The leather from which razor strops are made. The best grades are tanned from the shells of horse hides.

Suede
The finish produced by running the surface of leather on an emery wheel, with the result of ruffling up the fibres and giving it a "nappy" appearance. The grain of leather may be suede finished (called nubuck) but the process is more appropriate to flesh or split surfaces. The name was applied (originally in France) to a glove leather of Swedish origin and only later to the finish that characterised the material.