The Story of leather

Primitive man hunted wild animals for food; he removed their hides and skins and used them as  shelter, clothing and footwear. The earliest record of the use of leather dates to the Palaeolithic period, cave paintings discovered in caves near Lerida in Spain depict the use of leather clothing. Excavation of palaeolithic sites has yielded bone tools used for scraping hides and skins to remove hair. 

The skins rapidly putrefied and became useless, so a method of preservation was needed. The earliest method was to stretch the hides and skins on the ground to dry, rubbing them with fats and animals brains while they dried. This had a limited preserving and softening action. Primitive man discovered also that the smoke of wood fires could preserve hides and skins, as did treating them with an infusion of tannin-containing barks, leaves, twigs and fruits of certain trees and plants. It seems likely that man first discovered how to make leather when he found that animal skins left lying on a wet forest floor became tanned naturally by chemicals released by decaying leaves and vegetation

At the end of the nineteenth century, the invention of the motor car, modern roads, new ranges of coal tar dyestuffs, the demand for softer, lightweight footwear with a fashionable appearance, and a general rise in the standard of living created a demand for soft, supple, colourful leather. The traditional vegetable tanned leather was too hard and thick for these requirements and thus, the use of the salts of the metal chromium was adopted and chrome tanning became the tannage for modern footwear and fashion leathers. It produces soft, supple, beautiful and fine leathers, reflecting the way we live. 

Here at J.L.Rocha we only use the best leathers for our products, so you can have the product you deserve