The Right Honorable Hide

Men who savor life's richer delights have long recognized the regal elegance and amazing versatility of leather. It can tote your whiskey, keep your ice cubes frosty, offer you a spot to sit down, protect your Francotte shotgun, cart your stockholder's reports, your Shetlands or cuff links, keep your pipe cool, your cigarettes firm, your feet dry, your money crisp and your pants in place. It's tough, durable, pliable, warm, rugged and good looking. Among organic materials, it may well be the one least susceptible to successful imitation and displacement by synthetics because for functionalism and prestigious appeal, it can't be equaled.

Leather has figured large in man's history; as a toter and wearer of it, it behooves you to know something about it and its various types. Tanning, the process of converting animal hides into leather, is probably the first craft man learned on his way up from the apes. Certainly it antedates weaving. After centuries of protecting (concluded overleaf) himself with the pelts of beasts he had slaughtered, primitive man discovered that he could improve the quality of these skins in several ways. Soaking them in water, wood ashes, the tannic acid of tree bark or simply chewing them (as the Eskimos persist in doing to this day) were some of the methods used in turning hides into serviceable leather.

Og, son of Oog, used leather flagons to store water; he lived in leather tents to keep the wind and rain out of his hair; he warded off enemy blows with leather shields, crossed rivers in leather canoes and beat out messages on leather tom-toms so that his mate knew he'd be late for dinner. And interest in the good looks of leather came early, too: when archeologists opened King Tut's tomb, they found a perfectly preserved pair of leather sandals, brightly painted and jazzily trimmed in gold.

Helmets, breastplates, hammers, axes and other weapons bound with leather gave man both offensive and defensive power far beyond that of his own hands and shoulders. Right down to Napoleon's time, leather cannons laced with iron were formidable indeed, a sort of collateral descendant of the giant leather slings used by the Roman legions in besieging enemy strongholds. Wilderness scouts who explored our own frontiers were clad in fancifully fringed buckskin, and Fenimore Cooper immortalized them in his series of novels called The Leatherstocking Tales. About the same time, fashionable dandies in the capitals of Europe hit on just what was needed to swank it up among the ladies of the day: tight breeches of pastel buckskin. These culottes de peau were made even tighter by dampening them after they were on the wearer, so they would shrink to the tautness of a second skin. The effect of the breeches -- together with collars that reached the ears and hair worn in wind-blown Byronic ringlets -- was so bizarre that the best-dressed gallants of Paris came to be known as Les Incroyables, the Incredible Ones. What is really incredible, of course, is how they ever managed to sit down.

Today, the roster of animals whose hides are converted to leather reads like the line-up on Noah's Ark: goats, deer, cattle, sheep, lambs, calves, kangaroos, horses, snakes, lizards, alligators, frogs, ostriches, seals, sharks, whales, water buffalos, elephants and pigs. As a result, leather terminology can be misleading. We won't bore you with the lowdown on Cowhide, Calfskin, Alligator, etc., the origins of which the canny peltman may already have discerned, but here's a short glossary on the not-so-obvious types, where they come from and what they are:

Scotch Grain refers to the pebbled pattern embossed on cowhide or calf to resemble a heavy-grained leather that originated in Scotland. Cordovan takes its name from the Spanish town of Cordoba which grew famous for fine leathers during the Moorish occupation, now describes the tough, hard-wearing hide from the hindquarters of a horse. (What happens to the forequarters, you ask? They're used for baseball coverings. This digression naturally brings up the subject of footballs, which were traditionally made of pigskin but are today made of embossed cattlehide.) Suede is not really a type of leather but refers to a process for achieving the familiar napped finish by abrading the surface of kidskin (and other leathers), usually the flesh side. Capeskin is the excellent glove and garment leather processed from the hair sheep of South Africa, once known as the Cape Colony. Cabretta comes from the hair sheep native to Brazil, while Chamois, originally gotten from the Alpine antelope, now comes from the inner layers of sheepskin, oil tanned and suede finished. Patent is made from cattle and other hides by applying successive coats of varnish and letting each one dry. Mocha for fine gloves is the product of African or Arabian sheep, sueded to a luxurious texture. Peccary, the best kind of pigskin, is the durable leather of the Latin American wild boar. The pitted look, incidentally, that is characteristic of all hog leather is due to the pulling out of bristles early in the processing. Morocco, of course, was said to originally have been made by the Moors, is a fine, flexible leather prepared from goatskin and tanned with the dried and powdered leaves of the sumac. The phrase Top Grain indicates the outer, or hair, side of cattlehides cut to a specific thickness according to a standard gauge used by the leather industry.

Armed with this scholarship, you may now use bits of it in an offhand and erudite manner for conversational gambits. You can, we say, but perhaps you'd do better sticking to your usual scintillating talk and using your newly acquired leather lore to abet you in the purchase of some fine accoutrements like those shown on the preceding page.

A Look at Leather: Types and Textures

A hidebound haul, bottom row, l to r: English fawn leather humidor, $25; harness leather firebucket catchall, $35; deerskin traveling slippers, $10; long john pigskin shoehorn, $14; cowhide poker chip case, $35; leather-covered game chest, $49.50; cowhide dice cups, $6.50 each; gold-tooled leather card box, $18.95; saddle leather gadget bag, $37.50; butt hide zippered document case, $32; ostrich cigarette case, $40; English pigskin passcase wallet, $16.50; Hickok letter opener and library shears in calfskin, $8.95; cowhide wastebasket-umbrella stand, $50; collapsible cowhide kit bag, $32.50; zippered pigskin one-suiter, $110. Second row, l to r: German fine grain calf liquor case and accessories, $95; cashmere-lined calfskin gloves, $18.50; lamp made from leather ammunition carrier, $55; Swiss clock-barometer-thermometer-calendar in pigskin, $148.50; 8-oz. hipflask covered in pigskin, $20; saddle-stitched leather ashtray, $10; cowhide-covered bulldog pipe, $6.50; ostrich tobacco pouch, $7.50; cowhide sling chair with wrought iron frame, $50; English cowhide seat cane, $25; Kendall umbrella with pigskin-bound handle, $10; belts: saddle leather with S-shaped brass closure, $7.50; calfskin with double brass buckle, $8.50; black calf with stirrup buckle, $8.50; Hickok alligator with detachable gold buckle, $50; Paris cowhide with Cordova closure, $5, Top row, l to r: Hickok cowhide stud box, $10; coach hide brief bag, $75; harness leather waste-basket with brass eagle, $50; pigskin attaché case, $52.50; black cowhide brief bag, $65; marbleized cowhide writing portfolio, $25; cowhide liquor case with bone-handle accessories, $42.50; golden hide attaché case with file pockets and morocco lining, $85; saddle leather ice tub with aluminum liner, $38.50; top grain cowhide shotgun case, $50; zipper front suede weskit, $27.50.

pigskin

grain suede

alligator

scotch grain

calfskin

buckskin

patent

morocco

peccary

pinseal

chamois

cowhide

mocha

cabretta

cordovan

capeskin