Leather Quality and Product Life

What to look out for when buying leather products.

It all comes down to how the animal lived their life. Animals live outside, where they face all sorts of natural conditions. Get bitten by bugs, fight other animals often, scratch their backs against wood or roll around on the grounds.
When hair is removed to make leather, the scars pop up showing how easy or hard of a life they had. And leaves us with three choices.

1. Full Grain Leather. If the skin is clean, it goes straight to tanning process. This is indeed the highest quality of leather there can be since its kept as natural as possible.
2. Top Grain Leather. If the skin is full of marks and blemishes, the top layer is shaved off to make it cleaner. It the 2^nd highest quality you can find.
3. Genuine Leather. Since animal skins are quite thick, the bottom layers are split and bonded together with glues and then painted to look uniform. The lowest quality of leather.

 
What kind of Leather you get from Jild?

Our Primary goal is to provide you with leather that has a Raw Natural Feel with a rough texture. These types of leathers develop a natural patina with use, changes its shape and color with time. The more it ages the more beautiful it becomes.
We stick with Top Grain and Full Grain Leathers only.
The colors range from matte to shiny finishes but have the same feel and texture. We love to keep bringing out new shades and textures of leather so that you don’t ever run out of options.

What type of Leathers we use?

We use a multitude of types. Since every product demands a different type of leather.

• Pull Up Leather. This type of leather is treated with oils and waxes. A fun thing to do is to rub it hard with a piece of cotton every month or so, and its oils and waxes will resurface again giving a shiny look and making it look clean again. Average durability is around 5-6 years.
• Vegetable Tanned Leather. One of highest qualities in leather that have the most durability, roughly around 7-9 years. It’s not waxed or oiled. But it develops the most beautiful patina over the years.
• Nubuck Leather. The type that feels like a velvet-cloth. Its soft, but we use thick sheets of Nubuck Leather so it maintains the same look and feel. Its looks and feels amazing when in use.
• Crust Leather. Best for products that are molded by hand, like cig cases. It’s not waxed or oiled at all. But since the products are used very closely in hands or pockets most of the time, the leather ages just as perfectly as pull up does.
• Hair On Leather. Not commonly used in most of our products. You can find it in cig cases range.

What are there marks and scars on the product?

You can find a lot of products with perfect and fine finished leather. Namely Aniline, Semi-Aniline, Genuine Leather. These leathers have been shaved and split, then colored to look uniform and plain.

The types of leather we use have natural marks and scars (not to the point that the product is damaged). In simple terms, these leathers have not been shaved and have been tanned with those natural marks. All top grain and full grain leather hides have this same characteristic.

Why is the color and shape changing?

The leathers we use literally Age with use. The aging comes with forming a patina. Leather Patina is something developed through everyday use. The accumulation of dirt, body oils, sunlight and wear and tear create a darkening and soft sheen to leather goods. Over time the leather will oxidize and age naturally to give these effects. For us, that’s the real beauty of it.

Courtesy of a very dear customer.