[rds]

Figuring that I should probably treat my fine shoes better to something better than drug store polish or, worse, whatever our worthless local cobblers would put on them, I went to the Allen-Edmonds site to purchase what I thought would be a simple assortment of higher grade polishes. Their list of recommended products for various types of leather was easy enough to navigate and will be extremely useful...once I figure out of which kinds of leather my various shoes are made. Tried exhaustively searching here and Google and looked through various books, but no luck. Is there a relatively easy way or some kind of simple guide to telling apart calfskin, burnished calfskin, nappa calfskin and the rest?

 

[Kurt N]

To make things worse, AE's list of leathers doesn't match what they specify for their various shoes. Polished Cobbler (used on the Shelton) is, I gather, a type of corrected-grain leather, but I only know that from reading the boards here. And what is Burnside Leather (used on the Eastport)? Conversely, they mention Chromexcel in the list of leathers but I don't think they currently use it on any shoe.