Tanning

The art of tanning

How is leather made?

Leatherworking is a precious and ancient art, slow and tedious. It requires patience, skill and passion to produce quality leathers, worthy of being sublimated into shoes.

But before being a pair of moccasins or sneakers, leather is an animal. And beware: contrary to popular belief, leather production does not involve dedicated breeding!

Many European tanneries have instead chosen to source their raw materials only from slaughterhouses. The resulting leather is therefore an industrial residue, and can therefore be considered as a responsible material, a form of recycling, a by-product of another industry.

The skins thus cut are then collected and classified according to their quality. This upstream selection work, absolutely manual and artisanal, requires expertise and meticulousness. It often determines the price of the leather, and the quality of the shoes with which they will be made.

A hide can take more than a month to be tanned.

A process of about ten steps (they can vary according to the tanneries) must confer to the leather all the qualities which are required of it. Here is a summary that should give you an idea of the remarkable work that goes into each shoe:

In a tannery

1. The skins are first washed with plenty of water to remove all impurities and remnants of fat cells. They are then squeezed to be wrung out and stretched so that they do not curl.

2. Next comes the splitting: the skin is split to separate the upper part (the grain) from the lower part (the flesh). The smooth leathers are sanded once to get rid of the epidermis. At the same time, the hides are leveled to be uniform, then cut and selected according to their quality.

3. The skins are then dyed to achieve the desired color, or bathed in aniline to preserve their natural color. They are then dried, beaten and shaken to soften them.

4. Some hides, intended to become suede leathers, are scraped to give them a fluffy surface. Others are embossed to present a particular grain or pattern.

5. These hides in the making finally move on to finishing, where they are primed to have the desired appearance (velvety, matte, glossy, or patent) and color.

Once sent to our workshops in Porto, these skins will be cut, reassembled and sewn to become the shoes that our designers have imagined.

This long and tiring work is worth it, don't you think?

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