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 Why Leather Goes Bad |
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| So far we know that leather is an animal skin, treated to stop decomposition, soaked, rolled, dried, oiled, stretched, split, dyed, dried again, softened and colored. |
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| The fiber structure is omnidirectional — which simply means that it has no particular direction or pattern — like a tangled mass of spaghetti. It will stretch in all directions with no particular grain pattern or stress. The surface coating does not withstand this much abuse, however, and when leather is flexed or stretched continuously in the same spot, the surface coating develops minute cracks — not yet visible to the naked eye. |
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| Repeated flexing and stretching eventually causes the color surface coating to chip away in certain areas and eventually the natural leather color beneath becomes visible. Usually this appears to be a crack in the leather. It is not a “crack,” though; it is merely the absence of surface colorant running in a patterned direction (wear creases). |
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| Darker colors usually show the light color of the natural leather beneath, and light leathers do the same, except that having lost the protection of a resistant color coating, the exposed leather attracts dirt and oils and soon gets dirty and looks like a dark “crack.” Here is where the vat dyed leathers have a little advantage: the color beneath the surface coating, although usually not exactly the same color, is close enough that these creases or “cracks” are less obvious — but still detrimental. |
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| In a frivolous little sports coupe or a favorite old army jacket or handbag, we tend to view this as “character.” Furniture or an expensive automobile eventually begins to show “wear.” A meticulously restored classic automobile requires REUPHOLSTERING! (But NOT necessarily!). |
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