Classical leather tanning

[Dan D'Silva]

Hello all. I'd like to know whether there are any clear indications of what types of tanning processes were used in the Aegean and Near East. Essentially what I mean is, should the reenactor stick only to vegetable-tanned, or brain-tanned (or similar), or are both acceptable? I'd like to avoid blowing any more resources on leather projects that will turn out to be incorrect.

I take rawhide as a given. I have heard that the Romans did vegetable-tanning but I'm looking for Classical and earlier sources.

[Dan Howard]

Didn't Athens have a big market for alum tawed white leather shoes?
The term "aluta" was used in the past to refer to alum tawed leather.

[Crispianus]

According to "Amarna’s Leatherwork / André J. Veldmeijer (2011)" page 18:

"Current scholarly opinion holds that vegetable tanning, resulting in true leather,was introduced well after the Pharaonic era, most likely by the Greco-Romans (Van Driel-Murray, 2000: 299,305). However, it has been suggested (Veldmeijer &Endenburg, 2007: 36; Friedman, 2007: 60) that tanning might have been used by Nubian groups on the basis of a field test of remnants of loincloth from Hierakonpolis. these results need to be verified by proper chemical analyses (Veldmeijer, 2007b: 24;2008a: 3). The predominant skin processing technique in Pharaonic Egypt is oil curing. The use of alum and minerals in making skins durable is ambiguous (Van Driel-Murray, 2000: 303-304)."

It was once thought that vegetable tanning went back to the beginning of the Bronze age, this is probably due to difficulties in telling vegetables colours and tanning agents apart.

[Feinman]

Amarna leatherwork:
http://books.google.com/books?id=2lme9w4...in&f=false

Ancient Egyptian Materials & Industries:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Vj7A9jJ...rk&f=false

[Dan D'Silva]

Thanks. This is all very... alarming, I probably have to take back an awful lot of recommendations I've made on XMFM about where to use vegetable-tanned leather. Veg-tan is versatile stuff, but I can see replacing it in most applications with either a softer leather or rawhide.

This does answer the question that led to this one: I'd been trying to figure out what sort of period paint to use on a molded all-leather scabbard, but if such a thing can't have existed in the first place then it's a moot issue. Better just use wood, which is actually attested.

Van Driel-Murray's description of oil-curing sounds similar to brain-tanning; would it produce a similar result?

I'm also completely unfamiliar with alum-tawed leather except on paper. Is it functionally comparable to veg-tan (firmness and flexibility)? Would you use it in weight-bearing belts and straps? And... is it even available to small-timers like us?

[Feinman]

Well, oil- cured hide can become very soft like Chamois leather.
The Nubian loincloths are like the extremely fine examples in the links below, but some were more coarsely made, and some pieces found might actually have been hair nets. Some loincloths feature such fine mesh that Egyptologists aren't sure how they were made.. It's clear that everything from soft "leather" to rawhide was available in Egypt.

Check this out!:
http://interactive.archaeology.org/hiera...cloth.html
Look very closely at the loincloth in link below. That's a superfine mesh!! illy:
http://tinyurl.com/l7fd5rs

http://healsfang.com/leather_tann.html

[Dan D'Silva]

I think I would go insane before completing one of those... but it is informative. If you have something wrapped that snug around those regions, it'd better be soft.

So I've got to revise my ideas for leather usage. How do these sound?
- Fat-cured: Could accept brain-tan or commercial "buckskin" (which may be chrome-tanned) as a substitute?
- Shoe uppers, clothing, bags: fat-cured. Possibly shoes could have rawhide soles.
- Weapon belts: ?
- Gorytoi: fat-cured, with a wood spine ("soft leather" gorytoi with wood spines are known archaeologically).
- Scabbards: wood, with sheet-metal cover (known). (Or glued linen or parchment?)
- "Wicker" shields: rawhide (known for later periods). (Perhaps waterproofed somehow?)
- "Canteens": Skins, gourds or ceramic jugs?

[Dan D'Silva]

One other thing: If the gorytos is made of soft leather, then presumably the cover is as well. Does this mean that the apparently fitted cover in imperial art and the floppy-looking thing apparently attached to the gorytos in Greek art are the same thing? And if so, how might one go about constructing it?

[Dan D'Silva]

Can anyone tell me if fat-cured leathers are necessarily rough on both sides? I know lots of distributors sell "buckskin" with a smooth side, but I've also seen certain sources claiming that true brain-tan and chamois are rough on the grain side (or, rather, don't have a grain side) due to being scraped before the fat is added. If this is always the case, then I'll have to take back my recommendation of smooth leathers.

[Crispianus]

Sorry to take so long with a reply, from what I've seen of it, oil cured leather can be smooth, rough or grainy on one side depending on the surface preparation(grain side) and rough on the other(flesh side), it also depends on the type of skin....

you may find a new book "Leather Tanneries" useful, it can be found here:

http://www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/leather-tanneries.html

Probably best to get it from a library

[Robert]

Although the topic will probably not draw hordes of looks, the whole thing of leather covered scabbards could well be a re-enactorism and totaly wrong. It may well be the mayority of sword scabbards were all wood, perhaps painted! Which would imply nearly all reproduction scabbards are wrong .....

[Crispianus]

Although the topic will probably not draw hordes of looks, the whole thing of leather covered scabbards could well be a re-enactorism and totaly wrong. It may well be the mayority of sword scabbards were all wood, perhaps painted! Which would imply nearly all reproduction scabbards are wrong .....

I'm pretty certain it isn't a re-inactorism and hardly surprising if you consider that such thin leather coverings may not have been tanned in a permanent fashion such as Alum or Oil/Fat curing... for example there are very many soles from the Roman era sites but relatively little in the way of uppers unless under exceptional conditions and these are common items regularly replaced, these conditions may include secondary tannage such as the Bronze Age oak log coffins in Denmark, in fact this may well to be the reason why there is little surviving pre Roman leather in Northern Europe and one reason why I pointed out the new Tanneries book... to my mind the debate is still open....

[Dan D'Silva]

Sorry to take so long with a reply, from what I've seen of it, oil cured leather can be smooth, rough or grainy on one side depending on the surface preparation(grain side) and rough on the other(flesh side), it also depends on the type of skin....

you may find a new book "Leather Tanneries" useful, it can be found here:

http://www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/leather-tanneries.html

Probably best to get it from a library

I'll give it a shot. I've managed to talk to one or two people who do brain-tanning in the meantime and they seem to say that leaving the epidermis on a hide produces different results and that it's difficult to get the hide as soft as when it's fully scraped. Details were sketchy. I think they highly prefer to remove the grain.

Also, one tanner said that wet-scraping can produce a leather that's close to being smooth, but dry-scraping invariably leaves it fuzzy.

My estimation is that, pending further evidence, those of us who shouldn't have veg-tan in our time periods should probably stick to soft suedes.

Although the topic will probably not draw hordes of looks, the whole thing of leather covered scabbards could well be a re-enactorism and totaly wrong. It may well be the mayority of sword scabbards were all wood, perhaps painted! Which would imply nearly all reproduction scabbards are wrong .....

I really don't know. I've seen a few books stating that Skythians used leather-covered wood, but I haven't seen the actual evidence and don't know if they mean tanned leather or rawhide. Achaemenid findings, to my knowledge, consist of a wood core with traces of gold foil, a gold cover presumably built over wood, and chapes found in isolation that must have been associated with all-organic scabbards.

[Crispianus]

Dan here's a pic of a Egyptian eared sandal currently in Offenbach leather museum from Thebes 1500 bc , I think this is what is referred to as oil drenched made from many layers of thin leather with very small fine stitching, its probably for a wealthy person its quite smooth on one side, other thin leather uppers of true shoes were also found at Thebes in red and green but this had a more suede look...

[attachment=11003]Thebes1500BC.jpg[/attachment]

[Dan D'Silva]

That's interesting. It certainly doesn't resemble brain-tan or chamois. If it weren't a shoe, I'd suspect it was rawhide.