According to the China standard QB/T 2262-96 "leather industry terminology", “skin” and “leather” are different.
Skin: Skin is the basic raw materials of leather. It took from the animal body, include untanned leather and preservative-treated skin, also called rawhide.
Leather: Leather refers to the use of rawhide leather products can be made by tanning, anti-corrosion processing. It made some animal skin leather, leather can be called as an animal leather, for example, leather made of cowhide can be called as the cow leather.
From the perspective of professional industrial terminology, the key difference between leather and leather is the tanning process. Before tanning, it is called “skin”. After tanning, it is called “leather”. Many people think of “skin” as "natural leather", “leather” as “artificial leather”, it is totally incorrect.
The following tells how to name leather and fur in China:
- Leather should be marked with leather material type, such as cow leather, sheep leather.
- Film transfer leather or split leather should be marked “Film transfer” or “Split”, cow split leather. (Split leather is the leather after splitting and no-grain leather)
As leather and other composite materials, If the thickness of the leather base is not more than 60% of the total thickness, it should not be mark “leather” or “split leather”.
In addition, according to the standard QB/T 2262-96 "leather industry terminology", fur refers to the animal skins to be made soft, stable, durable and applied by tanning.
So the naming method of fur is the animal type plus “fur”, such as cow fur, sheep fur.