To make leather, first the skin needs to undergo a tanning process in which its proteins are converted into a stable material. It is the tanning that prevents leather from putrefying, gives its strength, and makes leather suitable for leather goods, shoes or clothes.
Centuries ago, leather was tanned with vegetable tannins or oil. But the invention of chrome-tanning in 1858 made tanning easier by using the metallic chemical chromium sulfate and other salts of chromium.
Despite causing risk to human health and damage to the environment, chrome-tanning quickly became popular because, at the time, chrome-tanned leather was more supple and pliable than vegetable-tanned. Further, as the duration of chromium tanning is between a few and up to a maximum of 24 hours compared to that of weeks for the samme tanning process using vegetable tannins, obviously chrome-tanned leather was, and still is, cheaper than vegetable-tanned leather.
Today, more than 150 years later, vegetable-tanned leather has catch up with the supple, pliable and useable qualities of chrome-tanned leather thanks to technological innovation. In fact, many believe vegetable leather is more beautiful. But nature is not easily manipulated with, and vegetable tanning still takes weeks. Perhaps that's why still today 90 percent of the world's leather production is tanned with chromium despite its danger to humans and the environment.
As part of our ambition to develop cleaner materials Vakigrad has developed a leather tanned with vegetable extracts from bark, leaves and root vegetables in replacement for chromium. It takes longer time and it costs a bit more. But we believe it's worth the price since human health and the environment is priceless.
