Vegetable Tanned vs Chrome Tanned Leather
Vegetable Tanned Leather
Vegetable tanning, also known as veg-tanning, uses vegetable matter like roots, leaves, twigs and bark which are high in a compound called tannin (not coincidentally where the process gets its name) that dehydrates the skins by replacing the water molecules and bonding with the collagen. Hides are stretched out on wooden frames and soaked in vats of increasingly concentrated tannin compounds, eventually resulting in a flexible and durable leather.
Vegetable tanned leather refers to the tannage, or method of tanning the cowhide into leather. It’s called “vegetable” because of the natural materials used in the tanning process like tree bark. It’s also eco-friendly. Vegetable tanning or veg tan as it’s sometimes called, is one of the oldest methods of tanning known to man. It’s literally been around for centuries. It takes about 6 weeks to complete the veg tan process.
Advantages:
-Produces “one of a kind” leather and products
-High durability, can last a lifetime
-Only utilizes natural ingredients
-Bio-degradable and environmentally friendly
-Will have a rich patina that gets better with time and use
Chrome Tanned Leather
Chrome-tanning, veg-tanning’s younger, faster cousin, replaces all the organic stuff with a man-made compound called chromium(III) sulfites. And ever since they were discovered in the 1890s, something like 90% of all the world’s leather is made using this method.
Chrome tanned leather is pretty much everything vegetable tanned leather is not. It uses chromium and harsh chemicals. It can be completed much quicker, typically in a matter of days. Because of these differences, chrome tanned leather is almost always cheaper than vegetable tanned leather. It’s no surprise then that chrome tanned leather accounts for about 90% of all leather on the market.
Advantages:
-Is produced quickly and inexpensively
-Leather and products made with this leather are less expensive and are made in greater abundance.
-There can be a wide variety of colors to choose from, and the color of the leather will not change over time
-It is thinner and softer than vegetable tanned leather