Vegetable Tanned Leather
We mainly use cow leather for our bags, sometimes soft goat and sheep leather for accessories. In WildIndo we do not use any synthetic or fake leather, because of short-term quality and durability.
Cow condition in Indonesia
I grew up in Sumatra and I still remember when my grandpa brought me to the meadow next to our village to feed his cows. He must have had around 5 cows and I used to go up on their back while they were eating the grass. That’s what you can call cow farm in Indonesia, pretty much free range cow for meat and leather. I can still see these activities in Sumatra, Java and Bali where several cows eat grass in the fields. We take our leather mostly from small farmers from Magetan, Jawa.
Time to harvest leather
We live in Bali where the main religion is Hinduism. However the rest of Indonesian islands is inhabited with muslims. Once a year Eid al-Adha (Islam ceremony – Festival of Sacrifice) need to give Qurban. The cows or goats are sacrificed and shared with people who cannot afford to eat meat (to the poor) and relatives. Cow leather supply is abundant after the ceremony. It would be a waste if people do not use skin of those already dead animals.
Tanning Process
As there are many cows in Magetan, they also became famous for leather tanning. Traditional tanning process itself using non chemical tanning such as Acacia bark and its components. I will be explaining more details on types of leather and process in one of the next articles.
