hi guys
new on here and reading through, i repair leather sofa's for a living. generally speaking a 'Leather couch' is made with the hard wear areas, ie. seating pads being made from the better quality leather, (that is, it is cut from the upper portion of the hides), and the sides, back being from the the lower split of the hides over here, often known as split leather.
there are 'bicast' type leathers which are made as said by gluing a sheet of platic type substance to the back of a lower quality split. like leather backed vinyl
there are lots of different cuts made from the hide nowdays and with techniques getting better it is sometimes extremely hard to tell the difference unless you can look through a microscope, i use one every time i visit a customer to assess damage.
al
oh great forum. hope to be able to learn some of your craft one day