Leather Care

Taking care of your handmade leather bags and wallets will ensure that they last a lifetime. Leather will change with use and your clark morelia product will develop a patina that makes your items unique to you. We use two types of leather, full-grain and top-grain, which each have their own care instructions. knowing how to tell the difference will help you care for your products in the best way possible. 

Full-grain leather doesn't have anything done to the outer most layer of the leather other than adding finishes. Full-grain leather showcases unique characteristics such as healed scars, marbling, and visible pores on the grain side of the leather.

Top-grain leather has the very top buffed to make these imperfections less noticeable, but also leaves the leather with a unique velvety texture. This texture, known as nubuck leather, has a softer feel to the touch and patinas differently than full-grain leather. 

Care Instructions 

First off, using your leather goods is the best way to care for them. This allows the leather to breath, moves the waxes and oils from the tanning process through the leather, and absorbs new oils from your skin. 

Full-Grain Leather:
The Majority of our products are full grain leather and require one simple but effective product to maintain the oils and waxes of the leather. We use Lovett Sundries leather Balm on all of our own products and highly recommend this leather balm. Leather balm can be used to minimize the look of scratches or scuffs as well as hydrate the leather to make sure it doesn't dry our over time. Applying this product one a year to our products, as well as things like leather boots or other leather accessories. All you need to do is apply the leather balm with a clean cloth, wait a minute or two for the product to start to absorb into the leather, then buff off any excess with another section of the same cloth. 

 

Top-Grain Leather (Nubuck):
Nubuck leather is best cleaned with a horse hair or synthetic brush for the first few years. It is naturally water repellent and the brushing of the nubuck leather will help maintain its velvety texture. If something stains the leather, there are specific cleaning kits for nubuck, which we recommend testing on a small hidden area first.  After a few years of use the leather will start to develop a more waxy surface at which point you can start to follow the same care instructions as the full-grain leather instructions above using leather balm.