Understanding Snake Skin Leather Handbags
Snake skin leather handbags are made from a premium exotic leather used by most of the world's top fashion designers. Soft and smooth on your skin, snake hides have recently sky-rocketed into one the most popular textiles in the accessories industry. Their intricate details make snake skin leather handbags look more like works of art than fashion products. The three preferred species of snakes used for leather accessories are python, cobra and sea snakes. Here, we'll go over some of the essential points you need to be aware of as an owner, or prospective buyer of snake skin leather handbags.
PYTHON
Python leather handbags exude prestige and elegance. Genuine python skin is very soft and smooth to the touch, giving you a pleasant sensation against your skin. Python skin is known for its color variations and for its elasticity, as well as its insulating capabilities. It's a very prestigious leather which gives a woman a further touch of sensuality and charm! Its beauty and extraordinary refinement are truly remarkable.
Now, we can sit here and use every affirmative adjective in the English language in describing python leather, but there's a controversial side to its story. There's been a lot of publicity about the brutal treatment of pythons during their harvesting.
A common belief is that pythons are hunted in the wild, skinned alive and left to suffer in torment.It takes a python ten years to grow into full maturity, often reaching lengths of over thirty feet, so it would be impractical for snake farms to raise these impressive beasts exclusively in captivity. The hunting of python throughout its native regions of Malaysia, Indonesia and Viet-Nam is a fact.
Due to the dramatic increase in demand and the international community's protection of endangered species, large snake farms have been established to breed and raise pythons in captivity. Due to the snake's size and equally large appetite, the hides that these farms produce are relatively smaller than the ones hunted in the wild. Farmed python skins average approximately six to eight feet in length.
CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of wild flora and fauna, regulates the hunting and export of python skins around the world. They set limits to the number of hunting licenses available every year. This is further incentive for the farming of pythons.
As for the misconception that pythons are skinned alive and left to suffer, python meat is actually a popular food item in Southeast Asia. Grilled python on a stick is prominently sold at roadside kiosks in all major cities.
The skinning of pythons can be carried out one of two ways, neither effecting the quality or desirability of the leather:
The front cut is an incision made along the snake's belly, which puts the belly scales along the right and left sides of the hide.
The back cut is made along the python's back, putting the belly scales down the middle.
Python leather handbags use both cuts, so don't be alarmed if you see a slight misalignment in the pattern on your purse. This is simply where two hides are coming together.
After skinning and cleaning, the python skins are exported, usually to Europe, for tanning, finishing and final assembly.
Snake skin leather generally comes in two main types of finishes:
Glazed skins are a thicker finish with a shiny gleen.
Matte finishes aren't as shiny and have a higher infusion of oils that make the final product softer and more pliable.
There are a few rare types such as the metallic finish, but those are rare and not considered mainstream.
Python leather handbags are known for their diverse and often dramatic designs. It can be a natural look that depicts the snake's actual skin tone and colors, it can be dyed a solid color after the skin's diamond pattern has been bleached away, or they also make hand-painted python leather handbags.
COBRA
There are two types of asp traditionally used in the making of cobra leather handbags. The mythical King Cobra can grow up to a very scary 18 feet, but it's now an endangered species and its hunting is outlawed. The common Asian Cobra is the most desirable type that is used for the manufacturing of snake skin leather handbags today. Prized for its very distinct eye pattern on its hood, the leather itself is very soft and smooth, and therapeutic when rubbed over your skin. Indigenous to Southeast Asia, the Asian Cobra has proven to be very resilient and a successful reproducer. As such, it's primarily hunted rather than farmed.
SEA SNAKE
Sea snake leather is smooth, light and soft to the touch. Its richness and exquisite grain pattern make it the finest of all snake skins. It's also the rarest. The reason for this is because sea snakes are extremely venomous! In fact, the sea snake is not actively hunted. Its bite is so potent that, due to its remote ocean habitat, every one is fatal. Sea snakes reside primarily in the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Thailand and certain parts of the Great Barrier Reef. They're usually found and killed when accidentally caught during commercial fishing. Sea snake scales are small when compared to their cousins, but it's this delicate feature that makes their hides so desirable for snake skin leather handbags.
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