I got the Bonnie Cashin tote today. The poor thing is pretty sad. As you suggested, the leather has been allowed to get super dried out during its life. On the sides of the bag where there is cracking at the top, there was once an original binding at the top that has almost completely fallen off, and the leather underneath has split and cracked severely. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it, if anything. It may be beyond anything I could fix myself. I think the best fix would be to add a binding back to it, but the leather underneath is so unstable, I'm not sure even that would work.
Much of the binding along the corners at the bottom was so dry it was basically dusty. Also, the bag wasn't dyed all the way through the leather, and there are places where you can see the original color of the hide coming through as bag as worn over the years. I decided to give it a quick bath, which may or may not have been a good idea, but I wanted to try to get moisture back into the leather. I've given it two rounds Montana Oil, and the binding already looks better, but the places where the dye has faded are pretty noticeable at the moment. I'm going to see what it looks like after a few days of conditioning and figure where to go next. I don't want to dye it, but I'm not sure how it is going to look, either. I've never tried Meltonian, but I'm wondering if that could be an option for the spots where the color has faded. I'm thinking about trying technique from Decride in the Hermes thread where you use ice water to make it colorfast. Let me know if you have any suggestions.
