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The Consortium in Tokyo: a great success!

On November 25th.  the Genuine Italian Vegetable-Tanned Leather Consortium presented  the event “Leather, water, tannins and the passion of Tuscan tanners”at Italian Institute of Culture in Tokyo. The aim was to propose to Japanese business operators a whole day dedicated to the Tuscan leather with an exhibit and a technical seminar.

In the Auditorium of the Italian Institute of Culture the seminar about veg-tan leather was attended by nearly 300 business operators, who showed great interest.  Paolo Testi, member of the Consortium Board of Directors, analyzed the ingredients necessary to make a state-of-the-art Tuscan vacchetta. He started from raw hides and the vegetable tanning process that transforms them into a natural product that “tells about us and the life we have lived”, and then he analyzed the characteristics of veg-tan leather. He talked also about water, an essential element in the tanning process, and territory, with the close relationship between the consortium tanneries and Tuscany.

Tannins and concept of quality

Tannins were presented by Stefano Pinori, member of  the Consortium Board of Directors and representative of the tanning extracts’ producers. Defined as the main element of vegetable tanning process but used also for different applications, tannins have peculiar properties that give to the leather the unique features of naturalness, color and change over time.

Finally Simone Remi, President of Consortium, introduced the concepts that underlying vegetable tanned leather: the culture of a non-standard product, the tradition of a manufacturing process that the Tuscan tanners have handed down from father to son for centuries, but above all the concept of quality, in the production and in everyday life. He tried to analyze current reality and to define the concept of quality that, according to Consortium, is not approval but affirmation of its uniqueness.

At the end of the seminar President Remi awarded Zhan Xuan Pan, winner of the special  prize of the Jury at the last edition of Craft The Leather, International Design Competition for young designers/makers organized every year by Consortium. All the designer collections were exhibited in the halls of the Italian Institute of Culture during the whole day.

The Japanese audience followed the whole conference with great attention and the final press conference last for some time because the Japanese journalists found the arguments treated in the seminar very interesting.

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