#Tannery hides skin#
In some variations of the process, cedar oil, alum, or tannin was applied to the skin as a tanning agent. Historically the actual tanning process used vegetable tanning. Among the kinds of dung commonly used were those of dogs or pigeons. Bating was a fermentative process that relied on enzymes produced by bacteria found in the dung. Once the hair was removed, the tanners would "bate" (soften) the material by pounding dung into the skin, or soaking the skin in a solution of animal brains.
After the hair was loosened, the tanners scraped it off with a knife. Hair was removed by soaking the skin in urine, painting it with an alkaline lime mixture, or simply allowing the skin to putrefy for several months then dipping it in a salt solution. Then they would pound and scour the skin to remove any remaining flesh and fat. First, the ancient tanners would soak the skins in water to clean and soften them. Skins typically arrived at the tannery dried stiff and dirty with soil and gore. Indeed, tanning by ancient methods is so foul-smelling that tanneries are still isolated from those towns today where the old methods are used. įormerly, tanning was considered a noxious or "odoriferous trade" and relegated to the outskirts of town, among the poor. Around 2500 BCE, the Sumerians began using leather, affixed by copper studs, on chariot wheels. Tanning was being carried out by the inhabitants of Mehrgarh in Pakistan between 70 BCE. Despite the linguistic confusion between quite different conifers and oaks, the word tan referring to dyes and types of hide preservation is from the Gaulic use referencing the bark of oaks (the original source of tannin), and not fir trees.Īncient civilizations used leather for waterskins, bags, harnesses and tack, boats, armour, quivers, scabbards, boots, and sandals. (The same word is source for Old High German tanna meaning 'fir', related to modern Tannenbaum).
These terms are related to the hypothetical Proto-Indo-European * dʰonu meaning 'fir tree'.
The English word for tanning is from medieval Latin tannāre, derivative of tannum ( oak bark), from French tan (tanbark), from old-Cornish tann (red oak). Peeling hemlock bark for the tannery in Prattsville, New York, during the 1840s, when it was the largest in the world
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