Russia Leather

New Year, New Stock, the mantra at Libre Livre. We recently bought some new skins, mainly brown and red to build up our stock, but try as we might we could manage to justify buying what we really hankered after, Russia leather.

For those who have not come across Russia leather before, it is leather tanned with vegetable tannins taken from birch bark. The process takes months. In my personal opinion, the finest Russia leather is reindeer skin, although cow, horse and goat have all been tanned in this way. The leather has a rich brown colour that has been described as "old walnut", certainly the oils in the skins have rendered them remarkably long lasting. Used for a variety of purposes as well as bookbinding, Russia leather can be identified by light diagonal cross hatched scores. The only trouble is this wonderful material is no longer made.

In 1973 a wreck of a ship, the Metta Catharina, sailing from St Petersburg to Genoa around 200 years before was discovered off the cost of Plymouth Sound. Its cargo, bundles of hides, was almost entirely undamaged and skins can still occasionally be bought, though they're not cheap mind you.