ORIGIN OF LEATHER

What you need to know about leather

1. The salted hides are placed in a large rotating cylinder, usually made of wood, called a “drum”. During the first drumming, the hides rotate for 24 hours in chrome, to degrease them and remove the hair. When they come out of this drum, the hides are blue and damp. Both the colour and the feel are very surprising: relatively soft but rigid. At the next stage, these hides are passed through a two-cylinder machine that finishes removing the hair and fat.
    
2. The next stage is splitting. The hide is cut in two through its thickness. This separates the dermis (the grain), which is kept, from the epidermis (the split). It is at this point that the first sorting of the hides takes place. The hides are cut again to give a cleaner finish.
   
   
3. The outer face of the leather, freed of its hair, is smooth and is called the "grain" side. The other, raw and rough face is the "flesh" side.
   
   
4. The hides are then distributed. Each drum contains several dozen hides, corresponding to a desired quality or colour. A recipe is injected into each drum, made up of oil of the same origin as NOURISHING OIL by SOFOLK to guarantee suppleness, and of dyes for through-colouring to ensure a vibrant final colour; this is what gives the hides, as they come out of the second tanning, their various properties and colours.
   
   
5. The hides come out flattened and wet. They are therefore stretched out by hand, one by one, and remain on the dryer for three or four days.
   
   
6. For colouring, the hides are laid on wires and pigmented by passing back and forth through the booth horizontally; the chemical finishing is carried out with a varnish equivalent to SILKY VARNISH by SOFOLK; the leather will be matt, satin or gloss.
    

THE SOFOLK METHOD

For the care and renovation of leather, the SOFOLK method was developed in 1990. It is directly inspired by the work of leather in tanneries, as we use the same raw materials (oil, pigments, varnish).