Our vegetable-tanned leathers have different surface finishes. Ghost Wax has a pale wax layer, while Pueblo has a brushed surface. Keep that finish in mind when choosing how to care for your cover.
The short version: do almost nothing.
Water is fine. Heat is not
Let a cover get wet and then let it dry on its own, at room temperature, away from radiators and out of the sun. It will dry a little darker in the wet patch and even out over the following weeks.
What ruins vegetable-tanned leather is drying it fast. Heat pulls the moisture out of the fibres and takes the natural oils with it, and the leather goes stiff and brittle in a way that cannot be reversed. A radiator does that in one evening.
Condition rarely, and less than you think
A little natural conditioner or beeswax balm every few months is enough. Not every week. Over-conditioning leaves the surface greasy, darkens it unevenly, and on a brushed hide like Pueblo it flattens the nap that gives the leather its character.
Apply a small amount with a cloth, work it in, leave it. If the leather looks wet afterwards, you used too much.
Sun tans leather like skin
Daylight is what moves undyed and lightly dyed leather from pale to honey, and that is the point of it. Long direct sun is a different thing: it will tan the side that is lit and leave the other side behind, and you end up with a cover that is two colours.
Do not leave a cover face-up on a windowsill for a summer. Everything short of that is fine.
Scratches
On brushed leather like Pueblo, a scratch is usually the fibres lifted rather than the surface cut. Rub it with a thumb and it settles back. On smooth leather like Buttero the mark stays longer but darkens along with everything else.
Most surface marks blend in within weeks. If a cover that stays unmarked matters to you, a dark colour hides more than a pale one — that is the only real lever you have.
For a closer look at how the surfaces differ, explore the leathers we use and our side-by-side guide to Italian leathers.