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After the news that the oak bark tanned sole leather tannery J. Rendenbach were to close down, many people hoped for some sort of solution for the products to live on. Now it’s announced that the fellow German tannery Kilger has bought the recipe, took over equipment and tanning liquids and more, including the J.R. brand, and will already next year offer the new soles.
In this highly interesting episode of the Shoegazing Podcast Jacques Kress of the largest calf leather tannery in France, Tanneries Haas, gives an insight into the world of premium leather tanning and how this special business works. Very informative for those who are interested to learn more about how calf leather tanning works, and different angles of this area.
The famous Italian tannery Ilcea and its owner Gruppo Vecchia Toscana has launched a webshop where one easily can buy single hides and have them shipped worldwide. A welcome addition especially for bespoke shoemakers or other small operations.
Gerberei Martin is perhaps the oldest still existing tannery in the world, founded in 1645, and run by the same family ever since. They make the most traditional oak bark tanned sole leather around, with at least 24 months in the pits resulting in extremely durable leather soles, and have a highly interesting old-school approach to the whole business. Shoegazing paid them a visit.
According to information given by a US sales representative of the famous tannery J. Rendenbach – most known for its oak bark tanned leather soles – the German company is to close the tannery. More info will follow later on, but here is a summary of what is known.
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Anyone interested in footwear will have come across a number of different tannery names in the marketing of the shoe companies’ products. Shoegazing goes through many of the main suppliers of materials for quality shoes, to give you a good overview of what, where and how things are made.
So-called “vegan leather” is quickly gaining traction as a popular alternative to regular animal hides. What one needs to be aware of though is that vegan leather in most cases is a synthetic material made of plastic that doesn’t breath well, isn’t biodegradable at all, and can be much more harmful to the environment than traditional animal leather. Learn all about vegan alternatives to leather and other types of artificial leathers in this article, and how it compares to natural animal leather.
There’s a lot of mixed and contradictory information found online about the various kinds of napped leathers – nubuck, split suede, full reverse suede and roughout. Here I go through all of these leathers and sort out what each of these actually are, the differences and the pros and cons of them all.
To judge leather quality is a science of its own, and many times people confuse leather quality with specific properties of various types of leather. Here’s an ambition to pin out what the differences are between the two terms, to help give you and idea of when you have shoes with lesser quality leather and when you have shoes that just has a property that you mistake for bad quality.
Leather that is really dense with small pores is in general a lot easier to have a shine on, also on areas that moves. The younger the calf is the denser the hide, that’s why this type of leather nowadays usually is called babycalf, even if it was standard calf leather a number of decades ago.
