Forty days in oak bark

Ninety per cent of the world's leather is chrome-tanned. It takes about six hours, produces a hide of uniform colour that resists water and stains, and is, for most purposes, the correct choice.

We do not use it.

Vegetable tanning suspends the hide in pits of oak, chestnut and mimosa bark for forty days. The tannins bind to the collagen slowly and unevenly. What comes out is a hide that is still, in a meaningful sense, reactive: it darkens in sunlight, absorbs the oil from your hands, and holds a fold as a permanent crease.

In year one, chrome-tanned leather looks better. It is more even, more consistent, more like a product.

In year three, it looks exactly the same as it did, except for the places where the finish has cracked. The vegetable-tanned hide, by then, has gone several shades deeper at the elbows and the collar fold, and has stopped looking like a product at all.

That is the trade. We think it is an easy one.