Full-Grain Bifold Wallet

Details

A bifold in 1.2 mm full-grain vegetable-tanned leather, skived down to 0.6 mm where it folds. Six card pockets, two note sleeves and no coin pouch, because a coin pouch is what makes a wallet fat. The name claims full-grain, so it is worth saying what that buys and what the alternative is. Full-grain is the outer surface of the hide with its pores and its healed marks left as they grew. That layer has the tightest fibre in the hide, which is why a wallet made from it can be this thin and still hold shape for a decade. The word the shelf uses instead is genuine leather, and it is not a compliment: the trade grades hide full-grain, then top-grain, then genuine, then bonded, so genuine is the second-worst grade there is. It is a split from the lower half of the hide, sanded and embossed with a grain that was never on that layer, and it is called genuine precisely because shoppers read the word as a guarantee. Bonded leather, one rung below, is leather dust and offcuts glued onto a fabric backing and it delaminates at the fold within a year. Every seam is hand saddle-stitched. A machine lockstitch runs one thread through a chain, so a single cut unravels the row. A saddle stitch is two threads locking each other at every hole, and a cut simply stops there.

• 1.2 mm full-grain vegetable-tanned leather, skived to 0.6 mm at both folds
• Grain uncorrected, ISO 17131 microscopy, thickness ISO 2589, both per lot
• Chromic oxide nil by ISO 5398, so no chromium and no chrome VI route
• Hexavalent chromium below 3 mg per kg by ISO 17075-1, tested anyway for the dye
• Hand saddle-stitched in waxed linen, 8 stitches per inch
• Six card pockets, two note sleeves 21.5 cm long open, which takes a 150 mm note flat
• Edges sanded, sealed and burnished in three passes
• Free restitching for life. We repair it, we do not swap it for a new one
• No bonded leather, no split, no plastic card window, no glued edges
• Pale tan on arrival, shaped and darkened within a month, and the fold will mark. If you want it to look new in year two, buy a coated one somewhere else.