Various Kinds of Leather

1878

Morocco leather is made from goatskins, tanned in sumach, dyed in the ordinary way, having been previously immersed in a solution of sulphuric acid; and the grain or stamping upon it is done either by hand or by machinery, similar to that for the purpose of dicing or graining. Very fine small skins for gloves are often prepared by immersion in a solution of alum and salt, instead of tannin, flour and the yolk of eggs being afterward applied to soften and whiten.

Buff leather, not now quite as much in request as in former days, was at first made from the skin of an animal called the buffe, or urns, which was then common in Western Europe. When new, the leather was always a tawny yellow, and the skins gave the name to the color.

Cordovan leather was first made at Cordova, in Spain, from hides dressed to be used with the grain side outward. It was from this leather that the title of cordwainer came.

Russia leather is tanned in an infusion of willow or birch bark, and derives its peculiar and long-enduring odor from the birch oil with which it is dressed.

Levant leather is first "struck out" in warm water on a mahogany table, "blacked" with logwood and iron liquor, then polished by revolving rollers, and "grained up" by the workman with a "corking board" on a table. The grain is set into the leather in a hot stove, and after this it is oiled with cod-oil.

In finishing japanned leather the japanning mixture is worked by the hand aloop. This mixture consists simply of linseed-oil and Prussian blue, the last coat being of linseed-oil and lampblack, put evenly over the surface as it lies spread out on a table. No machine has, as yet, been made to supersede the hand in this part of the work. In the blacking of skins a mixture of ox blood and acetate of iron is now very often used.