All leather is preserved animal hide. The difference between a veg tanned bag that gets better with age, smells amazing vs a chrome tanned bag with painted edges will crack & look tired.
Veg tan vs chrome tan is the central choice in modern leather making. One uses tree bark, acorns & roots. The other uses industrial salts of a heavy metal. The results, in the hand and at end of life, are very different.
What Veg Tanning Actually Is
Vegetable tanning is the original method, done in roughly the same way since Roman times. The process starts with raw hide, soaked in a series of pits filled with water and tannins drawn out of bark. Oak bark is the traditional British tannin source, alongside acorns, chestnut, and sometimes mimosa. Each pit holds a slightly stronger solution than the last, and the hide moves through them slowly, with each batch typically taking nine to fourteen months from start to finish.
The tannins penetrate the hide gradually, cross-linking the protein fibres and turning hide into stable leather. What comes out is a firm, dense material that holds its shape, smells faintly of warm bark, and is the colour of strong tea. Oak bark tanning specifically produces a tight, even grain with a slight pinkish cast in its raw state. It was historically prized by saddlers and bridle makers, and is still the standard for the best British equestrian leather.
We've described how this leather then becomes a finished object in our piece on how a belt is made.
What Chrome Tanning Does Differently
Chrome tanning was invented in the 1850s and became the dominant industrial method by the early twentieth century. Instead of natural tannins, it uses chromium sulphate, a salt of the heavy metal chromium, to fix the hide. The chemistry is fast and forgiving. Where veg tanning takes a year, chrome tanning takes around 24 hours.
That's why roughly 80% of the leather made in the world today is chrome tanned. It's quicker, cheaper, and produces a soft, uniform material in any colour you ask for. The trade-off is in what's been done to the hide, what's left in the leather, and what comes out of the tannery as waste.
Veg Tan vs Chrome Tan: The Sustainability Question
The case for chrome free leather is not a niche preference. Chrome tanning effluent, the water that leaves the tannery, contains residual chromium that, if not carefully treated, contaminates groundwater and soil downstream. Tanneries in some parts of the world are among the most polluted industrial sites on earth for exactly this reason. Even in well-regulated countries, chrome tanned leather cannot be composted, and its chemistry makes it harder to recycle.
Veg tanned leather, by contrast, uses materials that are food-grade in their pure form. The tannins are agricultural by-products. Spent bark goes back to soil as compost. The leather itself, at the end of its long life, will eventually biodegrade.
This isn't an argument that veg tanning is perfect. Leather is still a livestock by-product with all of farming's complexities. But for the same hide, the difference between veg and chrome is a difference in how much industrial waste and chemistry the finished material carries with it. More on why we use leather in the first place.
Why Veg Tanned Leather Patinas
Patina isn't only visual character. It's structural. Because veg tanned leather isn't sealed under polymer finishes or saturated with synthetic dyes, the surface stays porous. Oils from skin, dust, sunlight, and use all interact with the leather over time. The colour deepens. The grain softens. The leather records where you've held it most.
Did you know that veg tanned leather can get a sun tan? leave it out in the sun and it will darken!
Chrome tanned leather doesn't really do this. Its surface is usually coated and sealed, designed to look the same on day one and day five hundred. That sounds like a virtue, but it means the material never accepts your fingerprint. A chrome tanned wallet at three years still looks like a chrome tanned wallet. A veg tanned wallet at three years looks like yours.
A Dying British Craft
Britain used to have a tannery in every town. That expertise was the foundation for the country's reputation in shoes and saddlery. Today, only a handful of traditional veg tanneries remain. Oak bark tanning specifically is now classified as critically endangered on the Heritage Crafts Red List, with J&FJ Baker in Devon the only surviving British tannery still doing it the old way at scale, in pits that have been working for centuries.
There are quiet signs of renewal. A new micro-tannery, Cotmarsh Tannery in Wiltshire, is setting up to produce traceable veg tanned leather from cattle raised on the same farm. They've made teaching the craft an explicit part of the mission, so the knowledge doesn't disappear when the last generation of pit tanners retires.
Our own suppliers sit inside that surviving network. Thomas Ware & Sons has been tanning hides on its original five-acre Coronation Road site (A short walk where we regular do the Tobacco Factory market on North Street) since 1840 — the largest of the three traditional veg tanneries left in Britain, and just across the harbour from our workshop.
Why It Matters
Veg tan vs chrome tan is a small choice that scales up into something quite large. It's the difference between a 24-hour chemical process and a year of slow agricultural work. Between a sealed surface and one that earns its character. Between a tannery that has to manage heavy metal effluent and one that returns its spent bark to the soil.
We use veg tanned leather because it's a better material to make with and a better material to live with. It tells you, in its grain and its smell and the way it ages, that someone took the long way.
If you'd like to see what veg tanning looks like in finished form, our Holstein 001 Collection. The entire collection is made from a single shoulder of veg tanned leather supplied by Thomas Ware & Sons. Each one started its life as a raw hide pit-tanned across the harbour from our bench.
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