Full Grain Leather, Genuine Leather, and other terms of the trade.

Rolls of Hermann Oak vegetable tanned leather, the raw material for my products.

I see a lot of misinformation about the terminology used to describe leather. I'd like to clear some of that up. People often present this information as if there is a clear hierarchy of good to bad, usually with full grain leather at the top and genuine leather at the bottom.

Genuine Leather

A lot of people think genuine leather means bad leather. Cheap department store leather that quickly falls apart is often labeled as genuine leather. I think this is where the misconception comes from.

In reality, genuine leather means something similar to "made with real fruit juice."

Genuine leather products are made with real leather, but the term says nothing about the quality of the leather or where it came from. Made with real leather is a low bar to clear, so many cheaper brands will use the term, yet at the same time, all the finest leathers in the world are also "genuine leather" too. Genuine leather isn't always bad, but if the best thing a seller can say about their leather is that it is, in fact, "genuine leather", that is not a great sign.

I like to tell people it is a yellow flag though, not a red one. This connotation of bad quality is often lost in translation and you will sometimes see non-native English speakers trying to sell high quality goods in English speaking markets under this label.

Bonded Leather

Bonded leather is the correct term for what people often think of when they think of low-quality genuine leather. Bonded leather is "made with real leather," but it is specifically the leather equivalent of plywood.

Bonded leather means lots of little bits of real leather have been held together with glue and prayers and rolled out into a sheet. I wouldn't use it for anything myself, but there is always demand for budget alternatives so it will always be around.

Full Grain Leather

To understand this term, you first have to know about leather splitting. Fresh from the tannery, the leather is much thicker than is useful for most applications. These thick hides are then run through huge machines that slice the hide into thinner layers of usable product. The first slice removes some pure waste from the bottom of the hide. From there you are left with full grain leather. It has all the layers of the skin, surface level and deeper, and it is consequently the strongest and most robust. This is quality in the utilitarian sense of the term. If to you, quality means free of blemish, full grain leather says nothing about the aesthetic quality of the leather.

In full grain leather the top layer of the hide is left untouched. If a cow scraped itself against a barbwire fence, that will be represented in the top layer of the hide. If it got bit by a horsefly, that is there too. These marks are sure signs of the utilitarian quality of the material, and while some believe they add character to a piece, others simply find them unsightly. Blemish free full grain leather does exist; it is just rare.

Corrected Grain Leather or Top Grain Leather

Large swaths of blemish free leather are usually corrected grain, also called top grain. This means the topmost layer of the hide has been sanded down until it is perfectly uniform, and then one of dozens of processes are applied to give the leather a new, uniform surface finish.

These processes can be quite good, producing something very durable, or they can be less good, producing something which will fall apart like vinyl faux leather, with the top layer flaking off. Corrected grain leather says something about the aesthetic quality of leather, but it says nothing about the utilitarian quality of leather. The correcting process could have left quite a bit of strength in the hide, or it could have worn the leather inconsistently, creating weak spots.

Suede

Back to that splitting machine, suede is what you get when you take the bottom layer off of a piece of full grain leather. It is only the bottom layers of the hide and those have a much different feel and finish. It is much softer and has a unique texture to it. I use suede to line some of my products where it does not provide any strength, just a nicer feel and appearance. The term suede tells you about the qualities of a piece of leather, but nothing about the quality. There are nicer suedes, and less nice suedes with the nicer ones coming from higher layers of the hide and the less nice suedes coming from the lower layers of the hide.

So, what's that all to me?

Sorry if I left you feeling like you knew less than you did before, but that's the truth of it.

Unfortunately, there are not any easy keywords to fool-proof (or scam-proof) the leather buying process. For any kind of leather, I can show you good and bad examples of it. The best way to find good leather is to find a trusted expert. As a craftsman, the most important thing to me is the tannery the leather comes from. At the end of the day, it is the hard work of the men and women who work in tanneries that determines if the leather is good or bad. Hermann Oak Tannery, in St. Louis, Missouri is where I source all of my vegetable tanned leathers. They are the oldest tannery in the United States, in continuous operation since 1881. They provided leather for our soldiers in both world wars and continue to provide an unrivaled product with unique working qualities that make the sort of art that I do possible.