Lets look at a loose hide

Here's a couple of photos of hides on display at Hancock and Moore. I wanted to take these so everyone could see how the grain and texture varies on a hide. We sometimes forget this is a natural product and requires marking and cutting of the hides in building your furniture. They must trim out the areas that are 'unacceptable' or have too much wrinkling, etc. See how on the edges of the hide, the wrinkles become more pronounced? That area is typically cut away and NOT used on your furniture but it becomes swatch samples! This is why you may see samples that are color accurate, but are not indicative of the grain pattern you are going to get on your actual furniture. There's an art to cutting and marking.

Also, just for fun I took a shot showing all the various wood finished offered by H&M (click the wood samples 3x for hi res photo)