Dave kirjoitti:Just back from Japan myself and I thought I might generate a little controversy on the Lounge for my semi annual post. For those who don't know I was a vintage dealer since 1992 and make leather jackets now as a hobby (haha). I thought I might very casually describe the paradigm of leather over 100 years just in a paragraph or two and describe my recent trip to Shinki. So...leather...lets say conservatively I have handled over 30 thousand vintage jackets at this point...I own around I'm guessing 3 thousand of them, but I boxed most of them and stored them so I have no clue at this point. What I can say is this as a concept. You can divide North American vintage jackets into roughly 3 periods that matter, pre 1930s, 1930s to the war and the post war boom: then comes the post 50s decline which I don't really worry so much about. I would describe it like this...late 19th century jackets were mostly hand made pre industrial jackets, early sewing machines, pre pattern making standards that were required by ww 2. They are the most interesting to designers because of their nativity and primitivity (i made up that word). Patterns were made on the fly, simple or overly complex, sewing was single needle or hand, the leathers were varied and the designs ranged from excessive to pure simplicity. Tanning at the time was a major industry in North America, given there was barely industry. European techniques brought by immigrants (from a cursive view a lot of german jews). Tanning at the time was a mix of veg. tanning and chrome tanning. I am not a materials scientist but there were hundreds of books published on tanning at the time, breaking down every detail of the process, early chrome tanning was incredibly toxic (google hexavaleant chromium) . You will find early jackets have a green undertone (vs. the blue grey undertone of later chrome tanned jackets) those ones are really early and very toxic haha. Veg is veg. Leather jackets (in my opinion) were a by product of the shoe industry.
Shoe leather at the time was mostly from the ass of a horse prized for its spiral collagen configuration leaving the front quarters leather as a by product. Of course you can read all about my meanderings on this topic at the vintage leather jackets blog from years ago. Every tanner was like a wine maker, their own recipes and every leather was tanned for a different feel and purpose or preference. But like all industries, each tannery could only make so many styles of leather, and so many finishes and each finish and feel had its own purpose. I could write an entire encyclopedia on that topic alone. I digress, the early period of jacket making (from brain tanned native jackets to chrome tanned home made and bench made jackets) transited to the 20s and 30s where industrial process and catalog stores widely expanded the offerings. Technologies like the button, snap, and zipper advanced and urbanization created huge opportunities for city based makers who started to compete with each other on design and production cost for purpose built jackets. A small (again mostly jewish run company) would make jackets for police, varsity, worker, motorcycle, sporting styles and would copy or compete with his neighbor, and eventually bid on and compete inter city or inter national as transportation networks developed. All leading to the standardization of designs and techniques up to WW2.
Lots of makers showed different skill levels, better or worse stitching, better or worse leather but a lot was based on the materials available. By the 1920s tanneries were quite sophisticated, large transnational operations (example Dominion Tanners in Canada). At this point many specialized in types of tanning, leather finishes for particular industries or innovations (glove leather, shoe leather, bridal leather, or suede as in the case of Menlo) Also they divided into Chrome and veg, some doing both.
By World War two pattern making and standard sizing were no longer optional with all the research money, leading into the golden era of factory produced jackets of the 40s and 50s.
Im bored so lets focus on leather now. Having handled a bazillion jackets some leathers hold up better then others, some patina better and some just feel better (opinion based). After a while you begin to see the products of various tanneries by region, process etc.. so for example west coast usa, east coast, canada...etc and you can get a feel for the tanners that produced the product. I personally have a preference for Shinki as do Real McCoys and Flathead because they most closely mimic the process of a 1930s shoe tanner like Menlo or Herman Oak, and the end product is very similar to some of the coolest looking best surviving vintage jackets I own. That being said we would need to break down a few details about tanneries.
Ok so first lets talk about leather feel or temper. Leather in the hand has a lot of characteristics based on a lot of inputs. Thickness is one..that is determined by the type of animal and the depth of the split (cutting the thickness down). Then there is the type of tanning...there are a million types but lets say for purpose generally there is brain and smoke, allum, formaldehyde tanning , and various plastinations, chrome and veg. The last two are the most common. Chrome tanning is fast, like 24 hours fast, skin cleaned and prepped goes into a drum with water, other stuff and chrome salts...boom, wet blue leather. Stretchy and strong, (some say toxic) has a bit of a more plastic feel. Veg tan is more like a wine making process. Can go from a couple of days (like Victoria leather used by BR and BK and most of the price driven jacket makers) to a year (shinki). More time more money. So what is the difference there. Well I think the quick tanning process is abetted by the availability of chemically reduced and extracted tannin. BASF and others have brought the miracle of tanning liquors to a concentrate that helps make process faster, and more cost effective. The result is not that bad quite frankly, I use Victoria leather and a couple of other tanneries from Italy (I find it odd all these jacket makers make up the names of their leathers instead of just saying the tannery) Also I visit my tanneries on a regular basis to monitor production, technique and my shipments so that I can make sure the quality of my orders is to my standard. Of course I see all the other companies that buy at these tanneries and the owners freely offer up the information.
Note on the process of running a tannery. Small tanneries will sometimes customize to a point the leather. They (99%) specialize in what they make and how they tan it so that cannot usually be customized unless the tannery is developing a new product for its client list. They do not customize the tannage for one maker as that would not be cost effective. Also in order to do customization you would have to order at the minimum one drum load or roughly 2000-3000 sq feet which is roughly 100 jackets worth of leather in one colour. So typically a small jacket maker would be ordering stock. Second point would be the quality and feel of a leather finish would be influenced by so many factors, like availability of good hides properly salted and preserved. In the realm of HH this has become increasingly difficult. Chinese pressure to buy horse has reduced the availability and increased the cost. This impacts tanneries who have in a lot of cases turned to Canadian and South American HHs which are not as high quality as the Polish and euro hides. Why you say, well hot weather, ill treatment, branding, insect bites all impact the quality of HH. So unless the tannery has a special deal with a supplier they are usually buying a mix of skins, and a lot of quality issues. The Italians have mastered light correction for aniline finishes (transparent) and with pigment finishes (paint) it doesn't really matter that much. A lot of that grainy quality that shows up is reflective of corrections, milling or tumbling to hide damage and simultaneously bring up character, and in some cases hiding scarring. Regardless grain is nice, but creates difficulty for makers. If you want to make a wholesale order you can't have half grainy half smooth for a store for example. Ok so about the process, where you can customize easily is thickness below 1.3 mm and finish and grain. Milling (grain) is easy, thickness (.9 to 1.3) is based on split, and finish well as long as the hides are not scarred, its easy, but you need the cleanest in the top grain world for a transparent aniline finish.
