A Material Deep Dive:
The Leather We Use & Why It Matters
A deep dive into Badalassi Carlo Minerva Liscio
There are a lot of ways to make leather. Some of them are fast, cheap, and designed to look good on a shelf for exactly as long as it takes to make a sale. As the years go on, it's unfortunate that we are seeing more and more of this.
We don't use those.
Every Paperboy journal is cut from Badalassi Carlo Minerva Liscio — a vegetable-tanned shoulder leather made by a tannery in Tuscany, Italy. We order it directly. It takes a couple weeks to arrive and it is, without question, one of the most important decisions we've made in the entire process.
Where It Comes From
Badalassi Carlo operates out of Ponte a Egola, a small town in San Miniato — sitting between Florence and Pisa in what's known as the Tuscan Leather District. This isn't a marketing region. It's a geographic area that has been producing a big part of the worlds vegetable tanned leather for over a thousand years. This kind of leather is sustained by the specific combination of chestnut wood, local limestone rich water, and generations of tanners who never stopped doing it the hard way.
The tannery has been running for over 40 years. A small team and an Annual revenue under five million euros. By every measure, this isn't the biggest operation, which is exactly why their leather is what it is. They're not optimizing volume but optimizing each hide.
They are also a certified member of the Consorzio Vera Pelle Italiana Conciata Al Vegetale. Also known as the Consortium for Genuine Italian Vegetable-Tanned Leather. Think of it as a quality standard. It was founded in 1994 by a small group of Tuscan tanners who wanted to protect and regulate the craft . Every tannery in the consortium follows the same strict production standards.
What Vegetable Tanning Actually Is
On a day to day basis, most (not all) leather you encounter is chrome tanned. It's a process developed in the 1800s that uses chromium salts to cure the hide. It's fast and takes days instead of months. it's very consistent and it's cheap to produce at a large scale. It's also why most leather feels the same way forever.
Vegetable tanning is older, slower, and produces a completely different outcome.
The hide is cured using natural tannins, AKA compounds derived from plant matter like oak bark and chestnut. The process takes significantly longer and requires the kind of attention that is better suited to smaller scale. The result is a leather that is more structured and fundamentally more "alive" as a material. It breathes. It absorbs. It shows use. This is something sought after in the leather community.
We'll put it like this. Chrome-tanned leather is a finished product the day it leaves the tannery. Vegetable-tanned leather is just getting started.
What Minerva Liscio Is Specifically
Badalassi Carlo produces several leathers. Pueblo is their most recognized — a deliberately roughed surface with a rustic, worn-in look from day one. Minerva Liscio is the opposite.
Liscio means smooth in Italian. The Minerva Liscio finish is called "aniline". Basically means that no added protection is over the leather surface, just dye that lets the natural grain show through. What you're seeing when you look at the leather is the actual hide, not a painted surface.
During tanning, the leather is infused with a special blend of Italian fat wax of animal origin. This is what gives Vacchetta leather its characteristic feel. Fairly firm, slightly waxy to the touch, with a weight to it that chrome tanned leather does not share. It also makes the leather extremely welcoming to tooling and engraving, which is why it holds an embossed mark cleanly and permanently.
What Happens When You Use It
This is usually the part that's hardest to explain to someone who hasn't held a piece of well-worn vegetable-tanned leather.
The oils from your hands work into the hide over time. The areas you touch most develop a darker, richer tone. The surface takes on a little shine that wasn't there when you started. Scuffs and marks that would stay on chrome-tanned leather buff out or absorb into the patina. Plain and simple, the leather doesn't deteriorate with use.
A Paperboy journal looks one way on the day it ships. After six months of daily carry it looks different. After a year it starts to look even more different. After two years there isn't another one like it on earth.
That's what this leather does when you use it.
Why We Chose It
We didn't land on Badalassi Carlo Minerva Liscio because it was easy to source or because it checked a box, believe me there were leathers that we could go out and get the same day. We chose it because it behaves the way we think our leather goods should behave. It shows the love you give it and it improves with use.
A journal made from this leather isn't a product you replace. It's more so something you keep and pass down. That's the kinda thing we hope happens with all of our Journals.
Paperboy Leather is made by hand in Riverside County, CA. Since we make every leather journal from scratch, you can expect yours to be sent out in about 5-10 days.
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