Are you bonded?

 

Bonded sounds like a good thing – if you’re going to hire a moving company or a contractor or something of the sort.  You look for the ones that are “Licensed, Bonded, Insured,”  right?  In this scenario it means that the company is backed by a bond company so that if they walk out on the job, or they steal your Moxie and Oliver purse, you can file a claim with the bond company (it’s similar to insurance, but covers the things that insurance doesn’t – in my understanding, it covers the criminal things that could go wrong)

So, what if you’re looking at a couch and it says “bonded leather” on it?  What in the world does that mean?  I have actually been looking for a few chairs for my husband’s office and recently came across one that said it was made of “bonded leather” and I – a leathercrafter by trade – had to look it up.

Bonded leather is the same thing as “recycled” or “reconstituted” leather.  Rather than being made of a single piece of cow (or other animal) hide, it’s made of the little scraps of leather that are too small to use for anything else.  I’ve heard the process of making bonded leather described as similar to making paper – if you’ve ever done this, it involves blending up old scraps of paper, mixing them with glue, and straining them. 

With bonded leather, the leather is ground up and then mixed with polyvinyl acetate (PVA) and then rolled and stamped to look like real leather.  It usually has a fabric backing to hold it together (much like the fabric backing on vinyl)  but if you’re buying a piece of bonded leather furniture, you wouldn’t see this until the piece tears.

Bonded leather can actually be as little as 17% leather but since it contains leather, for a chair or a couch, the tag may actually say “leather” on it.  Apparently it’s the subject of both controversy and confusion, so much so that the Federal Trade Commission has published guidelines for labeling bonded leather.

There are several purported advantages to bonded leather, but I have a hard time thinking any of them are real advantages.  It’s a product made with chemicals, plastic, and minimal leather, whereas vegetable tanned leather is a meat industry co-product/by-product that uses natural substances in the tanning process.  I read one site that said comparing bonded vs. real leather was like comparing ground beef vs. steak, and that’s about how I see it – instinctually, how can a bunch of pieces of leather and fabric be anywhere near as strong as a single piece of cowhide?

So, there you have it.  Bonded leather (also called recycled or reconstituted) is like paper, or fiberboard, but using leather (and possibly only minimal amounts).  So if you’re out at the store looking at furniture, book covers, or accessories, be sure to look carefully to see if it is genuine full-grain leather, or if it’s leather scrap.  As always, I use only full-grain vegetable tanned leather – the genuine leather stuff – so you’ll always know you’re getting a top quality, 100% leather, product.

xo

c

Real or Fake?

No, I’m not talking about the collection of Betsey Johnson dresses I bought on Ebay before finally ending up getting a real one (I had to send back two fakes, and am still awaiting a refund on one of them), I’m talking about leather.

One of the main reasons I started making leather goods initially was that I kept burning through synthetic/vinyl bags.  I was going through one vinyl messenger bag approximately every six months, and they weren’t cheap!  When you wear a hole in vinyl, there isn’t much you can do about it either, other than throw the bag away.  And every time I did it, I thought – LANDFILL!!!  So I built myself a leather messenger bag, and almost seven years later, it is still in one very happy piece.

The Apartment Therapy Blog actually does a pretty good pro/con list of leather and pleather/pvc/vinyl.  I’ve always felt like the lists were pretty biased against leather since it is an animal byproduct, and that my list might be slanted in the other direction. With a little inspiration and a push from Apartment Therapy, here’s the pro/con list as I see it:

Benefits of Leather:

1.  Animal byproduct – cow leather comes from cows that are used for meat, and are not slaughtered specifically for their meat.  The cattle industry uses a remarkable percentage of the cow (I’ve heard numbers up to 95% but haven’t been able to verify it) for various purposes.

2. Current vegetable tanning techniques are less environmentally impactful than previous chemical tanning methods.

3.  Leather is durable and can easily last 50 to 100 years or more, if well cared for.  Not easily torn or punctured, as synthetics can be.

4.  Leather can be re-dyed a different color if desired, or the color can be touched up when it fades.

5.  Leather develops a “patina” over time, and breaks in (think of an old baseball glove or a leather jacket) and will become more comfortable as it ages.

6. Breathable, and less “sticky” when hot than leather. 

7.  Generally hypo-allergenic.

 

Benefits of Synthetics:

1. Vegan friendly – not an animal byproduct.

2.  Can be any color or pattern that you desire.

3.  Easily cleaned and maintained – doesn’t require oiling or conditioning

4.  Won’t crack or fade over time.

 

Did I miss anything?  Let me know!  And if you have comments on the above list, feel free to leave them.  For now, I’ll leave you with two chairs, one old leather, and one old vinyl:

I love the way the leather chair is worn, and how it has aged over time.  You can almost see someone sitting in it right now…  and it looks like it is for sale, so maybe that someone will be me!

Off to the studio…

Caitlin

Built to last

Wintergrass got me thinking about the durability of leather again this year. Last year, a guy named Arthur brought me two pieces. First, he came up to my booth with a guitar strap that a friend of his made him in the 1970s. Though the guitar strap probably didn't look just the same as the day he got it (apparently it started out a deep red/burgundy) it was clearly nowhere near giving up. He asked me to make him a guitar strap, the same as the one he had, but new. I looked at it, and said okay.

Then he came back with a belt. It was a brown crackly sort of color. Apparently it had started out black. The belt was also from the 1970's, and had clearly gotten a lot of use since. I agreed to make a belt as well.

The guitar strap was a little harder than I anticipated. It was two sections of what is called a "magic braid" where you take a strip of leather and slice the middle. The ends stay connected, then you weave the strips in and out of each other to form a braid. I remember recruiting my husband when I was trying to figure it out. It took weeks before the mathematical part of my brain kicked back in and I finally got it, and could do it consistently. Anyway, here is the result:


I did dye the leather a darker color after this, but for some strange reason didn't photograph it. Must have been pregnancy brain kicking in. Anyway, he came back with the strap this year and it still looks great. Seeing pieces out of the same materials that I use that have lasted generations already, with so little signs of wear, just makes me happy. My philosophy has always been to buy it once, buy it for life. Yeah I know someone has a slogan similar to that (Kohler? I can't remember) but what I mean is basically that it makes more sense, from an economic, environment, etc., standpoint to buy the thing you really want, that is good quality, and built to last, the first time, rather than compromising on your initial purchase when it will just result in a) you breaking down and buying the other thing later, or b) the thing that you bought breaking down and needing to be replaced. After all, part of the reason that I started making leather goods in the first place was that I burned through three vinyl bags in one year! And since the big hole in them couldn't be repaired, off to the dump they went.

This past month, the first messenger bag I made for myself turned four:


and she's still going strong. Looks as great as ever - made the daily commute with me on the bus for years, now doubles as a smaller diaper bag for shorter outings. No worse for wear, either. Someone said recently that the bag just looks better with age - it develops a patina all it's own. Just think, if I had been buying synthetic messenger bags this entire time I would have gone through 12!

Off to bed, so I can make new iPhone cases in the morning. And yes, I am sure the case will last longer than the phone :)

Moxie