Leather tells a story…
You may not have thought it before but the history of leather is a fascinating
area of interest, and these pages guide you through the origins of leather making,
timelines and leather restoration and conservation – ideal for those of you
working on a school project!
The Story of leather
Primitive man hunted wild animals for food; he removed the hides and skins from
the dead animal carcass and used them as crude tents, clothing and footwear.
The earliest record of the use of leather dates from the Palaeolithic period,
cave paintings discovered in caves near Lerida in Spain depict the use of leather
clothing. Excavation of palaeolithic sites has yielded bone tools used for scraping
hides and skins to remove hair.
The skins rapidly putrefied and became useless, so a method of preservation
was needed. The earliest method was to stretch the hides and skins on the ground
to dry, rubbing them with fats and animals brains while they dried. This had
a limited preserving and softening action. Primitive man discovered also that
the smoke of wood fires could preserve hides and skins, as did treating them
with an infusion of tannin-containing barks, leaves, twigs and fruits of certain
trees and plants. It seems likely that man first discovered how to make leather
when he found that animal skins left lying on a wet forest floor became tanned
naturally by chemicals released by decaying leaves and vegetation.
Much later the use of earth salts containing alum
as a tanning agent to produce soft white leather was discovered. The alum leathers
could be dyed with naturally occurring dyestuffs in various plants.
Wall paintings and artefacts in Egyptian tombs indicate that leather was used
for sandals, clothes, gloves, buckets, bottles, shrouds for burying the dead
and for military equipment. The ancient Greeks and Romans also made extensive
use of leather and it has remained an important industrial raw material since
those times. The Romans used leather on a wide scale for footwear, clothes,
and military equipment including shields, saddles and harnesses. Excavation
of Roman sites in Great Britain has yielded large quantities of leather articles
such as footwear and clothing.
The manufacture of leather was introduced to Britain by invaders, the Romans,
and by religious communities, whose monks were expert at making leather, especially
vellum and parchment for writing purposes. The ancient Britons had many uses
for leather from footwear, clothing and leather bags, to articles of warfare.
The hulls of the early boats, known as coracles, were also covered in leather.
Through the centuries leather manufacture expanded steadily and by mediaeval
times most towns and villages had a tannery, situated on the local stream or
river, which they used as a source of water for processing and as a source of
power for their water wheel driven machines. Many of these tanneries still exist,
but in many towns the only remaining evidence is in street names, like Tanner
Street, Bark Street and Leather Lane.
Early Leather Production
The earliest crude leathers were made by first immersing the raw hides and skins
in a fermenting solution of organic matter in which bacteria grew and attacked
the hides or skins, resulting in a loosening of the hair or wool and some dissolving
out of skin protein. The hair or wool was then scraped off with primitive blunt
stone or wooden scrapers and fat or meat still adhering to the flesh side was
removed in a similar manner. Tanning, the conversion of pelt into leather, was
done by dusting the rawstock with ground up bark other organic matter and placing
them in shallow pits or vats of tannin solution. Further additions of ground
bark, were made from time to time until the tannin solution had penetrated right
through the skin structure, taking up to two years for very thick hides. The
leather was then hung up for several days in open sheds. The dressing of the
leather involved paring or shaving it to a level thickness, colouring, treatment
with oils and greases, drying and final treatment of the grain surface with
waxes, proteins such as blood and egg albumins, and shellac to produce attractive
surface finishes.
During the middle ages leather was used for all kinds of purposes such as: footwear,
clothes, leather bags, cases and trunks, leather bottles, saddlery and harness,
for the upholstery of chairs, and couches, book binding and military uses. It
was also used to decorate coaches, sedan chairs and walls. Many leather articles
have been recovered from the Mary
Rose, a Tudor vessel which sank in 1545.
The majority of the leather was tanned with oak bark but soft clothing, gloving
and footwear leathers were tanned with alum, oil, and combinations of these
two materials.
With the discovery and introduction of basic chemicals like lime and sulphuric
acid, tanners gradually abandoned their traditional methods and leather production
slowly became a chemically based series of processes. Sir Humphrey Davy, the
inventor of the miner's safety lamp, investigated some of these processes.
The growth of industrialisation in the 18th and 19th centuries created a demand
for many new kinds of leathers, eg, belting leathers to drive the machines being
introduced into industry, special leathers for use in looms in the textile industry,
leathers for use as diaphragms and washers, leathers for use in transport and
for furniture upholstery.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the invention of the motor car, modern
roads, new ranges of coal tar dyestuffs, the demand for softer, lightweight
footwear with a fashionable appearance, and a general rise in the standard of
living created a demand for soft, supple, colourful leather. The traditional
vegetable tanned leather was too hard and thick for these requirements and thus,
the use of the salts of the metal chromium was adopted and chrome tanning became
the tannage for modern footwear and fashion leathers. It produces soft, supple,
beautiful and fine leathers, reflecting the way we live
The Worshipful Company of Leathersellers
The Worshipful Company of Leathersellers supervised the control of the quality
of mediaeval leather produced in the City of London. They received their first
Chapter of Incorporation in 1444 from King Henry VI, having been granted articles
for the regulation of their craft during the first Mayoralty of Richard Whittington
in 1398.
Through the centuries the Company has played an important role in the leather
industry, particularly in the field of technical education. The Company founded
a technical college in Bermondsey in 1909 and in 1978 donated £500,000 for the
erection of The National Leathersellers Centre at University College Northampton.
The Company continues to maintain close links with the college and the industry
as a whole and has recently been involved with the development of new premises
for the Leather Conservation Centre, also located on the University College
Northampton site.
History Links
mikeredwood.com See
the history tab for a fascinating timeline tracing the history of leather
Guidelines
for the care of waterlogged archaeological leather (English Heritage)