Leather-cloth

Leather-cloth, sometimes called American leather-cloth, or more briefly American cloth, is a textile fabric coated on one face with certain mixtures of a flexible nature when dry so as to resemble leather. Unbleached calico is the most common ground or backing employed, and this is coated with boiled oil, dark pigments, driers, and sometimes other ingredients, made up to such a consistency that the mixture can be uniformly spread on the cloth by rollers. Another method of making leather-cloth is by coating calico with 'linoleum cement' (see FLOORCLOTH). A third and extensively used coating consists of gelatine rendered insoluble by some chemical agent, to which glycerine is sometimes added. But the different mixtures which are or have been employed in making leather-cloth are numerous, and many of them have been patented. A good quality of leather-cloth when employed for covering chairs and sofas has considerable durability. As a cover to writing-tables it is even more durable than morocco leather, and it is not one-fifth of its price. A thicker kind of leather-cloth than that manufactured for upholstery purposes is made of coated linen and used for covering coaches, and there are other applications of this substance. It is more durable when glazed with a varnish than when finished in imitation of morocco leather.