BRITAIN’S NEW LEATHER

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 30 November 1940, Page 9

BRITAIN’S NEW LEATHER

BRIGHTER SNAKESKINS BY NOVEL PROCESS The latest discovery made by one of Britain’s industrial research laboratories is a new sports leather finished on the reverse or flesh side to give a striking contrast of long silvery fibres against a richly dyed background. Few animals grow a skin suitable for making into this exclusive leather, and skins, selected with great care, are collected from many parts of the world. The same research department has also discovered that lithography can be used for leather. A photograph of a design can be enlarged and printed on leather by the ordinary lithographic process, thus giving a new vigour and fidelity to complicated patterns, such as are found, for example, on a snake skin. Usually, when transferring a design to leather, it is done by an embossing machine. A novel process, achieved by these research workers, produced a design which, by being cut into the grain of the skin, secured a new permanency and the effect, in ieel and appearance, of velvet. By constantly investigating new processes and recording the action on leather of dyes and pigments, this firm, which began 30 years ago in one small room in an English midlands town, has many discoveries to its credit. Its transport was than a bicycle and a hired hand truck. To-day, after steady progress, it has moved to a model factory and is the world’s foremost ex-1 porter of fancy leathers.