Special Effect Finish for Bookbinding Leather

The art of bookbinding requires not only skills in the old craft of bookbinding but also materials that can transform a simple book into a high-quality artistic product. Due to its unique properties, leather still remains the first-choice material in the case of art and archival bindings. However, the long-term durability of modern leather is not known since there is little commercial interest in long periods of durability and the market of leather for art, design and archival purposes is very small. It is worth noting that deterioration is influenced by the manufacturing technology, and especially by the chemical ingredients used in the various steps of leather making, from dehairing to tanning and finishing. It is therefore very likely that modern and contemporary artworks made of/with modern leather undergo faster degradation than ancient and medieval artworks. Thus, leather finishing is very important for both artistic and sustainable points of view. In fact, finishes with special effects such as antique, bicolour, printed, cracked, waxy are highly sought for vegetable tanned leather used for artistic and luxury bookbinding, archival bookbinding and restoration purposes. The evolving leather finishing technology of chrome-free leather (i.e. vegetable tanned leather) has enabled us to protect and improve the quality, look and feel of leather and to make it suitable for contemporary art bindery.