Most of Dorà produce is handcrafted.
Most of Dorà produce is handcrafted. This doesn’t usually happen in mass production, where quick and economic processes are used. Instead, in Dorà it’s because of expert workers that our leather get its superb final appearance.
First, they dip a rubbing pad in a bowl of finishing paint, then they spread the product on the leather’s surface. Thanks to this mechanical padding action and to the long time required by the operation, the dyes and binding agents are slowly and deeply absorbed. Leathers are then allowed to air dry, avoiding the characteristic physical and mechanical stress of forced drying.
Hand made leather.
Leathers, especially the ones made for upholstery, are mass-produced with a particular, obsessive attention to save time, labour and raw materials. In recent years, several more and more complex and sophisticated machineries have been created in order to automatize every action as much as possible. For example, systems of automatic painting are now available: leathers run over some conveyer belts while a machine provides for the application of chemical products and for the desiccation.
However, a machine that can match an expert eye’s acuteness and human hands ability is still yet to be invented. That’s why the hand processing of leather is a matter of the utmost importance for Dorà. Processes must be slow, so that leathers are never subject to physical stresses and, at the same time, they let the finishing products to penetrate deeply into the pores. Also, they must be led by people who establish a direct relationship with the raw material and who know the characteristics of a material which is never equal itself, but needs always different attention.
The substantial difference between the application of a normal spray finish and the hand rubbed is that in the first case the coating forms a thick layer of chemical products which stretches out on the surface of the leather thus proving to have less wear resistance, to be less elastic and less transpiring; in a word, artificial.
