The Ultimate Guide to Leather Grades

There’s a lot of information and a lot of misinformation about the various types of leather. As someone who has worked with leather professionally for over 6 years and made thousands of wallets, even I was confused conducting this research. Many websites have conflicting information which made this process difficult. My hope is that consumers who take the time to inform themselves with this guide, can make better purchasing decisions. Table of Contents It Starts with a Cowhide The Grades of Leather Full Grain Leather - Simple is Best Top Grain Leather - Good as Full Grain? Split Grain Leather - the Leather Leftovers Bonded Leather - Scraps and Slurry Comparing Leather: A Wood Analogy Which Leather is right for you? It Starts with a Cowhide All cowhides (also called rawhide) range in thickness between 6 and 10mm. This thickness isn’t usable for much -especially not wallets or book covers. So it's split into usable sections. Here's an example of how a cowhide passes through a splitter and is made into top and bottom cuts. Splitting Cowhide When we order our leather from Horween, we specify the thickness that we want. The leather thickness we use for most of our goods is between 1.2-1.6mm. Before tanning and processing, the tannery takes each cowhide and “splits” it. Hides need to be split in the wet stage to achieve the final leather weight. If the leather isn't split and shaved, the weights (thickness) would be uneven through the full side of the processed leather and the chemicals, dyes, and/or waxes would not penetrate into the leather properly during the retan/color/fat liquoring stage. They take the hide and shear off the top cut for us. This portion contains the full grain of the hide and that's what we make our products out of. The bottom cut is used for lower grades of leather which I’ll discuss later below. The Grades of Leather There is no official standard for grading leather. Most tanneries use their own proprietary systems of grading based on cosmetic imperfections - not quality. For example, Wickett & Craig use the following grades: standard, utility and special to describe the amount of blemishes and marks are on their hides. However, there are 3 common categories in which we can classify leather based on how a hide is finished and which section of the cowhide is used. These leather categories are used interchangeably throughout the industry by manufacturers and retailers alike. The leather grades are as follows (listed in order of quality): Top Grain Leather, which includes: Full Grain Leather Corrected Grain Leather Split Grain Leather (sometimes called "Genuine Leather") Bonded Leather