Saffian
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/23/T%27oros_Roslin_-_T%27oros_Roslin_Gospels_-_Walters_W539_-_Closed_Front.jpg/220px-T%27oros_Roslin_-_T%27oros_Roslin_Gospels_-_Walters_W539_-_Closed_Front.jpg)
Saffian (also Moroccan leather or Moroccan leather ) is a very fine and soft leather named after the Moroccan city of Safi .
Manufacturing
Saffiano leather is made from goat hide using the tannery method and is usually tanned with sumac . It is artificially grained and dyed on one side, but not painted.
Faux saffiano leather is made from the split fur of sheep . The manufacture is considered an Arab invention. In 1749 the first European saffiano factory was built in Alsace and since 1797 - with the founding of the Choisy tannery near Paris - the boom in French saffron tannery , which also found its way into Germany at the beginning of the 19th century. For a long time, Saffian was pre-produced in the Orient (as so-called mesh leather), only tanned and dried, and then went to Europe for post-processing, where it was dyed, polished and finished . Tar paints were often used for dyeing . In Germany, especially in Kirn , the dyeing and dressing of the Indian Saffian was operated.
The women's conversations lexicon , published in 1835, writes about the texture of the leather that the saffiano leather from Morocco and Turkey was “[…] on one side cracked, chipped, shiny, as if coated with varnish, on the other rough, but very fine and soft , dry and never greasy […] ”.
use
Saffiano leather was used in particular for fine footwear , portfolio items and bookbinding goods.
Saffian boots
The term " Saffian boots " comes from the novel by Denis Diderot La Religieuse (1750) and describes people dressed up in Saffiano boots who, according to today's ideas , could be called gigolo .
Web links
- Saffian in the leather dictionary