Why We Choose Argentine Leather from Curtidos Reconquista

One of the things we've learned working with leather is that the tannery matters just as much as the label on the hide. Two pieces of vegetable-tanned leather can look similar on paper and behave completely differently once they reach the workbench.

That's why we pay close attention to where our leather comes from—and why Curtidos Reconquista became one of the tanneries we chose to work with.

There are excellent tanneries all over the world. We use American leather too, including leather from Wickett & Craig, as well as Italian leather. So this isn't a story about Argentina automatically producing “better” leather than everyone else.

It's about why this particular Argentine leather gives us characteristics we value, and why Curtidos Reconquista is a tannery we want represented in the products we put our name on.

A Family Tannery With Roots Back to 1952

One of the things that made Curtidos Reconquista more interesting to us was learning that we weren't dealing with a tannery that appeared overnight.

The tannery's roots go back to 1952 in Reconquista, Santa Fe. A historical case study of the company traces the business to the grandparents of the family that later led the tannery and describes a company that has continued into a fourth generation.

The original operation was located in the center of Reconquista and focused on a much narrower range of leather, including leather for shoe soles. As the business grew and expanded its product range, the tannery moved to an industrial area and continued investing in newer equipment while maintaining traditional vegetable-tanning methods.

More recently, Curtidos Reconquista expanded further into international markets, including the United States. For us, that history adds another layer to the material. We're a small maker working with leather produced by another family business thousands of miles away—one with more than seventy years of tanning history behind it.

That connection is pretty hard not to appreciate.

Argentina and Leather Go Back a Long Way

Argentina has a long history with cattle and leather, but history alone isn't why we buy their leather.

What matters to us happens much closer to the hide itself.

It Starts With Selecting the Right Hides

You can't take a poor hide, run it through a tanning process, and expect it to magically become exceptional leather.

The raw material matters.

Curtidos Reconquista works with carefully selected bovine hides for its skirting and saddlery leathers. As leatherworkers, that matters to us because eventually that leather ends up on our cutting table.

We see the grain. We feel the firmness. We see how cleanly it cuts. We find out how it takes dye, oil and finish. We see how it behaves when it becomes a belt.

The selection that happens at the tannery eventually shows up in our work.

The Vegetable-Tanning Process Is a Big Part of It

Curtidos Reconquista produces skirting leather using vegetable tanning and quebracho extract. That matters to us because vegetable-tanned leather has the characteristics we want for many of the products we build.

It has structure. It can take tooling and embossing. It responds to oils, dyes and finishes. And rather than staying perfectly uniform forever, good vegetable-tanned leather can develop character as it gets used.

That's one of the things we like most about real leather.

We don't expect a belt to look untouched for the rest of its life. We expect it to be worn. We expect it to flex. We expect it to pick up marks and gradually develop a history of its own.

Their Hides Spend Time in the Tanning Pits

This is where seeing the actual process made the material more meaningful to us.

Curtidos Reconquista shared photographs with us from inside the tannery, including their tanning pits.

We were told that the skirting remains in those pits for approximately 14 to 21 days.

Courtesy of Curtidos Reconquista Tannery / The Skirting Factory

That's a very different picture from simply ordering “brown leather” from a catalog.

You start to understand that before a side ever reaches our shop, it has already gone through a long process.

We Get to See What Happens Before the Leather Reaches Us

One thing we've really appreciated is that Curtidos Reconquista and The Skirting Factory have been willing to show us the process.

They sent us photographs from several different stages of production.

We've seen the dehairing drums, where sulfur and lime are used as part of removing the hair from the hides.

Courtesy of Curtidos Reconquista Tannery / The Skirting Factory

We've seen the large coloring and oiling drums used later in the leather-making process.

Courtesy of Curtidos Reconquista Tannery / The Skirting Factory

And we've seen the hides stretched across toggling frames while they dry.

Courtesy of Curtidos Reconquista Tannery / The Skirting Factory

When you only see the finished leather sitting on a workbench, all of those steps are invisible.

But they are still part of the leather.

That's Something I Think About When a Side Hits Our Bench

This is where the story becomes personal for us.

When a side of this leather arrives at American Heritage Co., we're seeing it near the end of a process that started long before we ever touched it.

Someone selected that hide.

It went through the early preparation and dehairing process.

It spent time in the tanning pits.

It went through coloring or oiling when appropriate.

It was stretched and dried.

It was inspected and selected again.

And eventually it made its way from Argentina to our shop in Wisconsin.

Then our part begins.

We lay it out, inspect it, decide where our pieces will come from, cut it and start turning that material into something someone may wear for years.

Knowing more about everything that happened before that first cut gives us a greater appreciation for the material we're working with.

Why Curtidos Reconquista?

There are plenty of places we could buy leather.

So why this tannery?

Part of it is the leather itself.

But part of it is the philosophy behind it.

Curtidos Reconquista combines traditional tanning techniques with modern process control, and its leather is made for demanding applications such as skirting, harness work, straps and saddlery.

That resonates with us.

We're not interested in making a belt that looks good in a photograph and disappoints once somebody starts wearing it.

Our products have to be used.

A belt gets bent thousands of times. It gets pulled through belt loops. It gets scratched. It sees sweat, heat, cold, work and everyday life.

We want leather meant for that kind of existence.

What Makes Argentine Leather Different?

There probably isn't one magic characteristic that makes leather from one country superior to leather from every other country.

We don't think about leather that way.

What makes the Argentine leather we use special is the combination:

the hides being selected, the skirting portion of those hides, vegetable tanning, quebracho tannins, pit tanning, drying and stretching methods, finishing, and the standards of the tannery doing the work.

Put all of those things together and you get a leather with its own character.

That's what we're after.

Not a country-of-origin label for marketing.

A material that performs the way we want it to perform.

Country Matters. The Tannery Matters More.

We've come to believe that one of the biggest mistakes someone can make when evaluating leather is stopping at the country of origin.

American leather can be outstanding.

Argentine leather can be outstanding.

Italian leather can be outstanding.

And poor leather can come from almost anywhere too.

The tannery matters. The hide selection matters. The tannage matters. The finishing matters. And the intended use matters.

That's why we want customers to know more than simply where our leather came from.

We want you to know who made it and how it got here.

From Their Hands to Ours

There is something pretty satisfying about being able to trace the story backward.

A finished American Heritage Co. belt starts on our workbench.

But before our shop, there was a tannery.

Before the tannery finished it, there were tanning pits, drums and drying frames.

And before any of that, there was a raw hide waiting to be selected.

We're only responsible for one part of that journey.

Our job is to take a material that other skilled people have already put a tremendous amount of work into and do justice to it when it reaches us.

That's why we use leather from Curtidos Reconquista.

Not because “Argentine leather” sounds impressive.

Because we know more about the people, process and material behind it—and we like what reaches our bench.

At American Heritage Co., our products are crafted in the USA using premium domestic & imported leather from some of the world's finest tanneries.

This is one of them.

BUILT TO LAST. CRAFTED WITH PURPOSE.