What Is Full Grain Leather?
Full Grain Leather is the highest quality leather.
Full Grain Hide has all grain patterns and imperfections and irregularities still apparent on the surface of the hide.
Full Grain Leather Aniline Finish Showing Hair Follicles & Grain Pattern
The majority of leather hides come from cattle, but Semi Aniline and Aniline can come from other animals including lamb, most animal hides can be made into Aniline or Semi Aniline Leather finishes.
Some people believe that Top grain Leather is the highest quality leather, but Top Grain Leather is the second highest quality leather as it has the outer layer removed.
Full Grain Leather is a very strong and very durable leather as the natural grain contains the highest fibres in the hide.
When sanding and buffing takes place to Full Grain Hides this results in a different finish and can’t be described as Full Grain Leather.
Crust Leather is a leather that’s had no surface finish or coating applied it’s naked leather.
Crust Leather Showing All Hair Follicles No Colour Is Applied.
Leathers vary in surface coatings, so with a Full Grain Leather the surface colour that’s applied is much less, resulting in a much softer feeling leather that feels more luxurious than a leather that’s had a greater amount of surface colour applied.
A great deal of the time Full Grain Hides are finished with an aniline dye, so that all characters and imperfections and grain patterns can be seen, including hair follicles.
Semi Aniline Leather is finished in a similar way to Aniline Leather but has a fine pigmented surface coating applied to give it more durability, still allowing the hair follicles and grain to be partially seen.
Semi Aniline Leather
All leathers are now strictly regulated by stringent standards in their country or origin. Most tanners obey the rules laid out by their respective governments in keeping with water treatments and waste disposals, these fall within guidelines laid down by the international committees. All tanners use non carcenegenic dyes and many are using ecologically sound chemicals in their process.