Leathers and Grains

At Leonard’s, we use real leathers, cut from real hides.  For more information, please see our “Why Leathers” page.

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Click on the different tabs below to see examples of the different kinds of grains on our leathers, and all the colors of our various leathers, along with some samples.

Pebble Grain Cowhides

Here are the pebble grain cowhides, a beautiful leather with a lightly-embossed tight grain and a finish that’s easy to keep clean.  They are soft and flexible, but still durable, and they come in 21 different colors:

 

Thicker Cowhides, including the “Bomber” Cowhides

These are our amazingly thick cowhides, great for larger Bibles.  They feel soft and flexible, but we can also add some extra reinforcement inside so they are not too floppy on a larger, heavy Bible.

 

Smooth Cowhides

These cowhides are soft, smooth and flexible and will give your Bible a new lease on life.  They have a more matte finish.  

 

Embossed Cowhides

This is a cowhide that is embossed with a grain to look like something different, in this case goatskin.

 

Hand-Dyed, Smooth Grain English Calfskin

This leather has a smooth feel and an antiqued mottled look. This is also a tooling leather, and we use it often for hardcover antique books as well as for softcover personal Bibles. It is durable and “breaks in well” so it feels great in your hand.

 

Smooth Goatskins

These are goatskins with a smooth feel, almost as smooth as calfskin. 

 

Sokoto Wild Grain Goatskins

This is traditional, archival, vegetable-tanned bookbinding leather from the famous Sokoto region of Nigeria — a fine leather that has stood the test of time. A book or Bible rebound in this leather can be passed down to future generations and may last, if well cared-for, for hundreds of years. It has a beautiful wild grain and feels great in your hand.

 

Capra Grain Goatskins

This is a fine archival, vegetable-tanned bookbinding leather with a shrunken grain. It is strong, flexible, has a beautiful grain, and feels great in your hand. The difference between Capra Grain and Sokoto goatskin is that Capra has a smaller and more even grain, and Sokoto has a wild grain.

 

Hand-Dyed Natural Goatskin

This is a sturdy natural goatskin, spindled (pre-wrinkled) to add flexibility, and dyed and antiqued by our binders.  It’s a tooling leather, as are all the leathers on this page, so tooled designs and blind-stamping can be done, as well as regular stamping with a color.  Note:  No two covers are exactly alike.

 

Kangaroo!

Not your typical Bible leather, but a very strong and good-looking one. This leather tools well and has the highest tensile strength of any leather on the marker, made from government-culled kangaroos. We recommend it especially for larger Bibles since it has more of a medium temper. It is a special-order leather, so this one must be paid in advance.  (We’ll help you with that.)

 

Leather Grains:

Here are some fast examples of the kinds of grains / textures you’ll find on our leathers.  Some are specialty styles.