Leather Card Holder

Details

A flat card holder in 1 mm full-grain vegetable-tanned cowhide. Three slots and a centre pocket, which is four cards comfortably and six if you insist. Four layers of 1 mm hide is 4 mm thick empty, and that is why it works in a front trouser pocket where a wallet does not. A card holder is small enough that the leather is the entire product, which is exactly why the grade gets hidden here more than anywhere. The trade sells hide in four grades. Full-grain is the outer surface with its pores intact and the densest fibre in the hide. Top-grain is that surface sanded off and refinished. Genuine leather is a split taken from the lower layer, sanded and embossed with a printed grain, and it is the second-worst of the four despite reading like a guarantee. Bonded leather is leather dust glued into a sheet. At this price the shelf is full of the third and the fourth. This is the first, at a measured 1 mm to ISO 2589, with the grain confirmed uncorrected by microscopy to ISO 17131. It is vegetable tanned, so there is no chromium in it at any valency, and the chromic oxide test comes back nil rather than the 3.5 to 4.5 percent a chrome-tanned hide reads.

• 1 mm full-grain vegetable-tanned cowhide, unlined, ISO 2589
• Grain uncorrected and unprinted, ISO 17131 microscopy per lot
• Chromic oxide nil by ISO 5398, hexavalent chromium below 3 mg per kg by ISO 17075-1
• Three card slots and one centre pocket for a folded note
• Hand saddle-stitched in waxed linen at four seams, free restitching for life
• Edges sanded and burnished, no painted edge coat to chip off in a strip
• No bonded leather, no split, no glued layers, no RFID foil insert
• The slots are cut tight and stretch to your cards over a fortnight. The natural tan will darken to a deep amber in the first year and the darkening is uneven, because that is what an unfinished hide does with hands and light.