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About the materials About 50 tanneries all over the world produce the sole and upper leather in the price and quality category used by the made to measure shoemakers. The other umpteen thousand tanneries of this world produce leather for the shoe industry. But even the suppliers of the bespoke shoemakers can only tan as good leather as the animals’ rawhides are. The quality of rawhides available to the tanneries depends on the consumer habits of the meat eaters. They again want cheap meat and that means it must grow quickly. Fast growing breeds and the respective fattening methods are not beneficial to the quality of raw skin or meat. Cattle and calf leather is mainly used for high-quality made to measure shoes. Preferable are raw skins from cattle living in cool countries, whose skin is thick and tissue is firm. Only oak-tanned leather with a tanning time of at least a year is ultimately suitable as sole leather. For both sole- as well as (calf) upper leather, the shoemaker prefers skins which are dense, thick, with fine grains. These raw materials are for the above mentioned reasons often not easily available. As shoemakers, we would be very interested in high quality leather coming onto the market, with details about the breed, country of origin, and handling methods. |
