“I paid three hundred pounds for the thing. Why would I pay you a third of that to clean it?”

It’s a fair question, and the woman asking it in Primrose Hill had a fair point. Her cowhide lay under a glass coffee table, pale brown and white, with a red wine mark the size of a saucer on one of the white patches and a general greyness in the areas where people put their feet. She had already been told online to wipe it with a damp cloth. She’d done that on a smaller mark the month before, and the patch of hide underneath had gone hard and slightly puckered.

Water can ruin a cowhide. A cowhide can still be cleaned. The two statements sit together more comfortably than most people expect.

What Happens to a Cowhide When It Gets Wet?

A cowhide rug is leather with the hair left on. The skin has been tanned – usually with chromium salts, which make it soft and stable – and then treated with oils and fat liquors that sit between the collagen fibres and let them slide past each other. That lubrication is what makes a hide feel supple. Take it away and you’re left with something closer to a piece of cardboard.

Soak the hide and the water carries some of those lubricants out. As the skin dries, the fibres bond more tightly to each other without them. The leather stiffens and shrinks, and if it dries unevenly it puckers. On a thin, cheap hide this can happen after a single mopping-up of a spilt glass of water left overnight.

The hair itself tolerates moisture far better than the skin does. The problem is getting moisture into the hair without letting it reach the leather underneath, and on a short-haired hide the distance between the two is a few millimetres.

Why the Edges Curl First

The edges of a cowhide are the thinnest and most exposed part of the skin. They dry first and shrink most, so as the middle of a wet hide stays damp, the edges tighten and lift off the floor. Once they’ve curled, they often stay curled. To my mind, a hide with curling edges tells you more about its history than any stain on the hair does – somebody, at some point, got it wet and let it dry in a hurry, often next to a radiator.

How Do Professionals Clean a Cowhide Rug?

Mostly dry, with as little water as the job will allow.

We start by turning the hide over. The back tells us how it was finished and whether earlier water damage has left hard, dark patches. Some hides also have a felt backing glued on, which changes how carefully we handle moisture. We also check the hair side for printing or dye. A lot of hides sold now are dyed or printed with animal patterns, and those colours can move with even mild cleaning chemistry. A hide that has been dyed gets a test on a hidden corner first.

Then the soil comes out. A cowhide traps more grit than people think, especially along the grain of the hair where it lies flat. We take the hide outside and shake it hard, holding it by the edges. After that comes slow vacuuming with a soft brush attachment, suction turned down, working in the direction the hair lies.

For general greyness and light greasy soil, we use a dry cleaning compound: a slightly damp absorbent powder, a bit like fine sawdust, carrying a small amount of cleaning solvent. It gets brushed into the hair with the grain, left for a short time to absorb the soil, and then vacuumed out. This does most of the work on a dull hide without putting any real moisture near the leather. Fur cleaners have used variations on this principle for generations.

Individual marks get a spot clean with dry foam. We whip a mild, pH-balanced shampoo suitable for leather into a stiff foam, lift only the foam onto the hair with a soft brush, and work it into the mark. The foam carries very little water, and what water there is stays in the tips of the hair. Then we blot straight away with a clean white towel, pressing along the grain, and repeat until nothing more transfers.

Things that shouldn’t go near a real cowhide: a carpet shampooer, a steam cleaner, a bucket and sponge, or a washing machine. Some manufacturers of printed hides say otherwise on their care labels. I’ve seen two hides come back from a domestic machine. The worse of the two came from a flat in Twickenham, and it looked like a leather jacket that had been left crumpled in the rain for a week. It never lay flat again, and it took the owner a good while to stop blaming the washing powder.

Drying is flat, in a cool room with a fan moving air across the surface. Never near a radiator. Never in sun. Never with a hairdryer.

If the leather underneath has stiffened in places, from our cleaning or somebody else’s attempt, we work a leather conditioner into the back of the hide in thin coats and flex it gently by hand as it absorbs.

The Primrose Hill hide took just under two hours from start to finish. The greyness came out almost completely with the dry compound, and the wine mark faded to a faint pink that you had to kneel down to see.

Brushing With the Grain

Cowhide hair lies in one direction, generally from the neck end towards the tail. Brushing against it lifts the hair and, on an older hide with weak hair roots, pulls it out. Every step of the cleaning above – vacuuming, compound, foam and blotting – follows the grain. At home, running a hand across the hide tells you which way it lies in a second. Smooth one way, rough the other.

Which Stains Can Come Out of a Cowhide?

Most fresh food and drink spills respond well if they’re blotted straight away and not rubbed. Coffee and tea on the brown patches barely show. Red wine on a white patch is harder, and often leaves a faint shadow. On the Primrose Hill hide we worked the foam into the mark in several short rounds, blotting between each, and stopped while the hair was still only just damp at the tips. Pushing for the last trace of pink would have meant pushing water down to the skin, and a faint pink shadow on white hair is a lot easier to live with than a hard, shrunken patch of leather under it. Grease marks from food or hand cream lift well with dry compound because they sit in the hair and don’t soak into the leather.

Ink and felt tip usually stay. So does dye transfer from a wet coloured item left lying on the hide.

When a Dog Has Used It

Urine is the hardest problem with a cowhide, because it soaks straight through the hair and into the skin, where it dries and can leave a stiff patch and a lasting smell. Cleaning the hair doesn’t reach it. Washing the leather ruins it. To my mind a cowhide that a dog has used more than once is a replacement job, and I’d tell a customer that before quoting.

Why Is My Cowhide Losing Hair or Splitting?

Some hair loss is normal wear. Areas where people walk or feet rest wear the hair down gradually, and eventually leave a thinning patch. That takes years.

Sudden hair loss in patches is different. It usually means the hide got wet and the hair roots were loosened, or it was poorly tanned in the first place. Brushing a patch like that pulls out tufts. There’s no way of putting the hair back.

Splits in the leather come from dryness and flexing. A hide that lives on underfloor heating, or on a floor where chairs push and fold it every day, loses its oils over time, and eventually the skin cracks along a line where it bends. In a house in Wandsworth, a cowhide under a kitchen table had split in three places where the chair legs dragged across it every mealtime.

Can a Split Be Repaired?

Usually. A strip of thin leather or tough fabric glued to the back of the hide across the split, with a flexible leather adhesive, holds it together and stops it spreading. From the hair side the repair barely shows once the hair is brushed across it. It won’t make an old, dry hide young again, but it will keep it on the floor for a few more years.

Is It Worth Paying to Clean a Cowhide at All?

Sometimes, and it depends mostly on what the hide cost and how much you like it.

A good-quality natural hide in a large size is worth cleaning properly. A cheap printed hide that cost less than a family meal out may not be. Neither is a hide with widespread hair loss or urine damage, however well it’s cleaned.

Here’s the opinion that loses me work: cowhides don’t belong under kitchen or dining tables. They get chair legs, food and drink at the same time, and no amount of cleaning keeps them looking good for long. A hide in a living room or bedroom, away from direct sunlight and heating, can go years with nothing more than regular care at home. To my mind, that’s where they belong.

Care That Keeps a Cowhide Out of the Workshop

Shake it outside every few weeks, holding it by the edges, and vacuum it with the brush attachment and the suction turned down, following the grain. Turning it round every few months spreads the wear.

A customer in Hornchurch has had her hide for eleven years doing exactly that. She hangs it over the back fence on the first dry Saturday of every month, and the neighbours’ cat sits underneath it.