this is great.

My only question or confusion regards "Morocco". I agree it is a much-misused term. There sits on eBay at his moment a book for sale described as "Tree-calf Morocco", for example. hahaha

But I have spent way more time than I'll care to admit reading the contemporary descriptions of art bookbindings and techniques for producing them, ca say 1875-1920. ...and it's clear that 'Morocco was a term used loosely then.

Even so, the hard-core types (Matthews, Grolier Club, and the New York, English, and French Binders of the period all seem to agree: Moroccoisn't embossed (unless straight grained), even when it is pebbled. The pebbling comes from a hard 'boarding' of the skin (according to Matthews anyway).

Etherington also mentions it isn't a grain embossed pattern.

And then of course they all chase tails further breaking down the differences between Niger, Levant, small-t turkey (often pebbled), etc.

The only thing I think I can tell that appears to be consistent across all the period literature if not today) is that 'Morocco' has a very large grain (the large background diagonal grain), with a smaller finer 'pinhead' secondary grain (the grain which is brought up as 'pebbled' when manipulated (though not embossed mechanically) as Matthews mentions. All the exhibition catalogs, auction catalogs (which I have been able to compare to the actual books in question) all seem to essentially call THIS type of leather "Morocco". The consistent factors being the spidery large veining together with the smaller scale grain.

I wonder if all that had been commingled and the terms mean different things these days?

The one term I see misused (and which I misuse all the time, too casually) is using "crushed" when I/we mean "polished.

Crushing is something I don't think anyone does anymore. Pressing the book between hot nickle paltes, to totally flatten the leather. I have seen it once used by my binder, but it was on a miniature binding, where the large grain would be out of scale (as in, too big). You can actually still see the grain in the glare at the top of the photo, but in normal room light, it is much suppressed (see bottom of the binding in the same pic).

"Polishing" is 99.99% more common I think, in the period art bindings anyway, and sometimes within a fraction of being nearly crushed. Zahn was known for his very high "mirror-like" (that's a period quote!) polish, but he never suppressed the grain fully.

I may have this all wrong, but I decided a few years ago I needed to fully answer this for myself, because even dealers at the very high end seem to float these terms willy-nilly and contradictorily. I had no chose but to run back to Matthews' "Modern Bookbinding Practically Considered". That's a new search, but I long ago bookmarked that (before getting a hardcopy), because I was mightily confused by contemporary usage.

I'm pretty sure Etherington is the one who emphasizes that pebbling of the pinhead grain should not be from embossing, but simply is raised during hard"boarding" or softening of the leather. Can't find a link, but this stuck out to me.

Diehl doesn't spend much time on it, she's the one mentioning that 'real' Morocco is extinct, and that the closet thing is 'Cape', from South Africa (at the time she published "Bookbinding, Its Background and Technique"), 1946).

My big question, can this very large-grained leather, in aniline dyes, still be acquired? The 'lore' is that the goat breeds which yielded true Morocco, as in, from Morocco (or the Levant) are extinct. Is this true? So much modern leather (and maybe it is the poor photos on the manufacturer's sites) look grainless, or one-dimensional.

Is there anywhere today where you can purchase leather like THIS(both are roughly octavo size, for scale)? What strikes me about the large veiny grain pattern is that it is not merely another shape or texture of the surface (with its own specular highlights), but that the dye (as opposed to stain or paint) in this grain yields a second lighter color. This makes the surface so much more visually interesting than the painted and mechanically embossed leathers you see today on cheap "leather" books, like THIS, at left in comparison to the dyed Morocco at right. In the right example you get two colors to the grain, and two different scaled patterns of specular highlights. At left it is just flat paint and fake surface.

Anyway... yours was a great walk through. I didn't understand the practical nature of vegetable tanned versus chrome tanned (re paring etc.), and thought it was primarily a conservation issue. My thinking was one lasted better than the other (less acidic, or less likely to split).

Thanks for doing this. Most of my "education" comes from dealer-provided information (often propaganda in nature!), and the older references (trade publications, etc.). But there's no substitute for someone who knows the stuff explaining it in a practical sense.