Why Does Leather Smell So Good?
Almost every day, we get someone who comes into Ravensgate and comments on how the leather smells so good. Unfortunately for us, we spend so much time around leather, we have become kind of noseblind to the scent and can’t appreciate it as much! Nonetheless, the leather in our shop has a rich scent that people love.
But, why is that?
As a material, leather doesn’t seem to have scent producing qualities such as food or flowers. Yet, it’s still able to produce a rich and recognizable scent.
The reason why leather smells so rich comes more down to how it was tanned and less than from the leather intrinsically.
Traditional tanning methods make leather smell good
Leather tanners can use different tanning methods to turn hides into leather. The traditional form of tanning leather, known as vegetable tanning, makes use of plant-based products to treat the hides. During the tanning process, the tannins from these plant-based products are densely packed into the fibers of the hides. These tannins remain bound into the leather throughout its lifetime, and they are what give off that pleasant, earthy scent that fans of leather have come to love and expect.
Lack of scent from chrome tanning
Chrome tanning is another method of tanning leather. Instead of making use of plant-based tannins, chrome tanning uses chromium and other metallic agents to preserve the hide. This method of tanning is fast and inexpensive, making it much more common than traditional vegetable tanning. This is unfortunate for leather consumers though.
Because it uses metallic agents, chrome tanning fails to produce a product that has the rich, natural, earthy leather scent. By comparison, chrome-tanned leather is odorless or, at the least, has a faint scent that fades over time.
Besides not smelling as great, chrome tanning has other drawbacks as well. The final product doesn’t tend to last as long. That is why chrome-tanned “genuine leather” products that you can find at any generic department store are inexpensive but tend to flake and crumble after a year or two of use.
Additionally, the chromium wastewater from the tanning process is bad for the environment.
For these reasons, we never work with chrome-tanned leather at Ravensgate.
Vegetable-tanned leather at Ravensgate
At Ravensgate, we like to know exactly where our leather comes from so we can be sure about its quality and characteristics. The leather we use in our products primarily comes from two tanneries: Badalassi Carlo from Tuscany, Italy and Wickett & Craig from Pennsylvania. Both of these tanneries exclusively use traditional vegetable tanning methods and produce an excellent final result that we love to use in our products.
Head over to our web store to peruse our selection of leather goods. Of course, you can’t appreciate the scent of leather from our website, so you can also come by our shop at 207 Bridge Street, Phoenixville, PA to check out our leather goods in person!