Aqueous polyurethane formulations

A finished leather comprising leather which has not been fat liquored and/or rendered water repellant, a fat liquoring and/or water repellant agent applied to such leather, a dried adhesion improving coating composition applied thereto, the adhesion improving coating composition consisting of a bottoming coat composition containing polyurethane A, as defined below, alone or admixed with a base leather finish as defined below, the adhesion improving coating composition containing 1 to 20% polyurethane A, and a base leather finish upon said dried adhesion improving coating composition which comprises a binder which is not polyurethane A and a coloring agent wherein the polyurethane A improves the adhesion of the leather finish coating to the leather to which the fat liquoring and/or watery repellant agent has been applied, and is present only in the dried adhesion improving coating, and wherein the bottoming coat composition is an aqueous polyurethane formulation consisting essentially of one or more polyurethanes A which consists essentially of

• a) one or more organic diisocyanates or a mixture of organic isocyanates which has an arithmetic mean NCO functionality of from 1.9 to 2.3 (monomers I),
• b) one or more dihydric polyether alcohols having a number average molecular weight of from 500 to 5,000 or a mixture of polyether alcohols which has an arithmetic mean functionality of alcoholic OH groups of 1.6 to 2 and a number average molecular weight of from 500 to 5,000 (monomers II),
• c) one or more alcohols containing from 1 to 3 alcoholic OH groups and not less than one ionic group (monomers III),
• d) no dihydric alcohols or one or more dihydric alcohols having a number average molecular weight of from 62 to 499 (monomers IV) , and
• e) one or more polyamines having not less than two ##STR8## groups or no such polyamines (monomers VI), with the proviso that the amounts of incorporated monomers I to VI are such that the ratios of the number of equivalents of OH to that of NCO are from 0.2 to 0.6 for the incorporated monomers II/monomers I, from 0.2 to 0.8 for the incorporated monomers III/monomers I, from 0. to 0.2 for the incorporated monomers IV/monomers I and the ratio of the number of equivalents of --N--H to that of NCO is from 0 to 0.1 for the incorporated monomers VI/monomers I, that the arithmetic mean functionality of all the monomers I to IV incorporated is from 1.8 to 2.3, averaged over the sum of the NCO groups of the monomers I and the alcoholic OH groups of the monomers II to IV, that the ratio of the number of equivalents of NCO to that of ##STR9## for the incorporated monomers I, the OH groups for the incorporated monomers II to IV and the ##STR10## groups of the incorporated monomers VI is from 0.9 to 1.0 and, where monomers VI are simultaneously incorporated, the ratio of the number of equivalents of NCO to that of OH for the incorporated monomers I and the sum of the incorporated monomers II to IV is greater than 1, that the monomers II have a degree of ethoxylation of less than 30% by weight and that from 0.05 to 0.2 mmol of the ionic groups of the incorporated monomers III are present in ionized form per gram of polyurethane A in the aqueous formulation.