The leather industry was an important part of medieval life and trade. The versatile material was used to make wearable items such as shoes, gloves and bags. It was also used to make equine equipment such as harness and saddles. By the Middle Ages, saddles had to be strong and supportive to carry the weight of armour. They were built on a wooden tree, padded with wool and horse hair and covered with leather. Military items such as scabbards for swords and knives and even types of armour were also made from leather.
Contemporary records stated that:
‘In most villages in the realm there is someone, dresser or worker of leather, and for the supplies of such as have not, there are in most market towns three, four or five and in many great towns and cities ten and twenty, and in London and its suburbs nearly two hundred.’
Cherry, J. (1991, 301) ‘Leather’, in Blair et al English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, techniques, products
Medieval place names from the period, that remain to this day in many towns and cities also tell us that tanneries were widespread; for example, Tanner Row and Barker Row dating from the medieval era in York, and Tanner Street in Northampton.
Rules were laid down by law in this period governing which artisans in the leather industry could take part in the different aspects of the process of making leather goods. Tanners, for example, were not allowed to work as butchers. Curriers were not permitted to do the work of tanners. Curriers were not allowed to work as cordwainers, and so on. Rules were strict, and thorough. In 1184, for example, orders were given that no tanner or tawyer (workers who processed ‘small’ skins) could set up or practise trade within the bounds of a forest, except in a market town or borough. This was to stop the poaching of deer for their skins. In 1351, a series of regulations and rules at a parliamentary and municipal level separated off the two industries of tanning, currying, tawing and leatherworking. This separation was supposed to reduce the likelihood of any sort of monopoly occurring in the leather industry.
Monastic houses often maintained their own tanneries in the medieval period, producing leather for everything from footwear to book binding. Meaux Abbey, a large Cistercian monastery near Beverley in the East Riding of Yorkshire, ran a tannery. In 1396, an inventory showed that they held a variety of calf leather, and cow hide, in ‘sole peces, sclepe, clowthedys, and wambes’ worth £ 14 10s 4d. It also detailed fifteen tubs and various tools such as three ‘schapyng-knyfes’. It also held 400 tan turves, the blocks of bark the tannins were derived from. This was a large amount, which perhaps reveals the quantity of leather being tanned in the monastery at the time.
Monasteries were also great producers – and users – of parchment and vellum. In medieval times, the parchment maker was called a percamenarius or parchmenter. These artisans would be found in every town in the country, providing writing material for scribes and book sellers for manuscripts, books and prayers for religious houses. They would choose the best unblemished skins to make parchment for a smooth finish that was pleasant to write upon and illuminate. White beasts would produce the palest, luxurious parchment. Once the skin had been soaked in lime water to remove hair, it would be attached to a frame to dry. The skin was attached with strings held by pegs, to allow for the skin to shrink as it dried. The pegs would be turned to tighten and stretch the skin which had to be done slowly and carefully. Any nicks or cuts in the skin would open during stretching, producing holes in the drying material. The parchmenter would scrape the skin with a curved knife called a lunellum. Once the skin was dried, it would be scraped again, with the craftworker trying to create a uniform thickness. Early parchment and vellum was quite thick, but by the thirteenth century techniques allowed for a thinner, delicately textured finish. Once finished, the vellum or parchment was rolled up and sold in sheets. Historically, vellum was difficult to use as the surface was often greasy, despite its treatment. Writers used a compound called pounce to dust the vellum prior to use. This was made from crushed pumice stone or cuttlefish bone. Sometimes thin pastes were rubbed into the skins to make them whiter, using lime, egg white, flour and milk. Some writers improvised and used materials such as crushed eggshell, alum, resin or powdered incense. This paste was called staunchgrain.
In Il Libro del Arte, written in the fifteenth century, Cennini provided recipes for material to tint parchment green, indigo, peach and purple. Examples of books using purple vellum still can be seen in museums today, such as the sixth century Rossano Gospels, written in silver ink. Interestingly, in the seventh to ninth centuries, as parchment and vellum were so expensive, they were often re-used. The writing was scrubbed or scoured away, and this sometimes left behind ghosting of earlier texts. Recycled parchment used in this way is called a palimpsest. Who can tell what valuable writings were lost in this way?
Parchment and vellum are made by one company in the UK today – William Cowley in Buckinghamshire. Being made from collagen, the skin has an unusual quality that is still valued by some artists in the modern day. When water (or paint mixed in water) touches the surface of the collagen it raises and becomes pliable, creating an interesting effect and finish.
Tanning as an industry expanded rapidly in the medieval period. Skins were readily available as a by-product of the butchery trade in market towns in particular. The butchers were compelled to bring the hides of the creatures they butchered for meat into the market, along with the meat itself, and tanners had the sole right to buy the skins. Butchers and skinners would flay the skins, and tanners and fellmongers would buy them. Only tanners were permitted to buy cow hide. Fellmongers, who were hide merchants, prepared other skins for sale by trimming and washing them, and removing hair. They could buy skins such as goat, sheep, deer and pig skins. Tawers and whittawers prepared these smaller animal skins ready for use. They used a solution of potash alum and salt, together with egg and flour to process the skins. This did not make ‘true’ leather, and was not waterproof, but it was a useful material in the medieval world.
Evidence has been excavated that tells us that tanning pits were used in the medieval period and inner horn waste (after the outer hard keratinous part of the horn has been removed and sold for use elsewhere) has been found nearby – always a good indicator of tanning activity in a location. Hooves and horns were left attached to the skins by the butcher as they had no worth in meat terms, so they were usually removed by tanners; hence the waste being identified as an indicator of tanning activity. The hide would then be washed, usually in the town stream – and this was very polluting, as dung, blood and mud was washed away in the same water that supplied the town’s drinking supply. There were regular complaints about this water fouling activity carried out by tanneries in the production of leather. In 1306, tanners were held partially responsible for the fouling and subsequent blockage of the course of the River Fleet in London, and in 1461 complaints were recorded when one William Frankwell reserved the right to use a ditch at the side of his meadow for tanning, as it threatened to pollute the town water supplies.
Tanning was an important and lucrative business in the Middle Ages, and like the cloth industry, it attracted a high degree of control by town authorities as well as at a governmental level. It was ‘big business’ and open to abusive and fraudulent practices. Tanned leather was regularly examined by ‘searchers’, officials either appointed by the town authorities or the craft guild themselves. This kept tanning standards high. Once inspected, leather would be stamped with the searcher’s own seal, which marked it as genuine, well-tanned leather of a good quality. This inspection could happen at market, or in the ‘seld’ – the craft hall where leather was sold.
After hides were washed, the next step was the removal of scraps of flesh, fat and hair that still adhered to the hide. This was achieved by immersing the skins in a lime pit or by soaking in urine. Some evidence suggests the rather pungent and unsavoury – yet efficient – practice of skins being dowsed with urine and left in the sun to become slightly putrescent so that the pores on the skin opened, making the hair easier to remove. Once the hair loosened, it would be scraped off with a blunt knife, and any flesh and fat would be removed with a sharper double-bladed knife. The hide would then be immersed in a solution made with warmed dog or bird faeces, or dunked in a solution of barley, rye, beer or urine. These processes would neutralise the alkalinity of the lime and make the leather softer in the process.
Finally, the prepared skins would be soaked in the tanning pits, in a solution of water and crushed oak bark. This solution was rather colourfully referred to as ‘wooses’ – which it has been suggested by historians as a derivative of ‘oozes’. Oak bark for tanning was gathered between April and June when the sap was rising and it was easiest to peel. It was then dried after gathering and ground at bark mills by huge millstones powered by water or animal power. There is evidence of a bark mill at Marley, at Battle Abbey in East Sussex. Once in the pits, the skins would be moved from time to time to ensure an equal coverage of colour in the leather. The skins would remain in the pits for around a year. After removal from the pit, the skin would be rinsed and smoothed before being put in sheds to dry slowly. When they were dry, the currier could take over and finish the skins.
Curriers dressed and finished the leather, after it had been processed at the tannery, using a combination of oils and fats. They also sometimes dyed the leather. Currying helped to make the leather stronger, more flexible and water resistant. Curriers also stretched the leather on racks and burnished it to a fine finish. Sometimes the skins would be dampened again and trampled or pummelled to soften them. They would then be brushed or smoothed with stones. Skins would also be stretched on racks and shaved to obtain a uniform thickness, rinsed again, then rubbed with greases such as tallow and fish oils. The skins would be piled up to ensure that these greases and oils penetrated evenly and then the hides would be hung to dry and any excess grease cleaned away. If a finer leather was required, with a high degree of suppleness, it would be ‘boarded’, or rubbed on a flat surface such as a table. At this stage, the leather could be coloured and polished. When the currier finished these processes, the leather was finally ready to be sold to leatherworkers.
Further inspection by ‘searchers’ could take place in some towns at the currier’s workshop to check for quality. Curriers were not even allowed to dress hides deemed to be poor quality or badly tanned. In London in 1378, searchers examined forty-seven hides being held for currying, belonging to one Nicholas Burle. They were found to be poor quality and badly tanned. He admitted that they were not fine enough quality for shoe making, but claimed that they were intended for sale to saddlers and leather bottle makers, who required a lesser quality of leather. However, a mixed jury of his peers in these trades decided that the leather was so bad it was unfit for any purpose and the leather was confiscated.
If the skins were bought from the butcher or fellmonger by a tawyer or whittawyer, rather than a tanner, the process used was different. The skins (sheep, goat, deer, horse, dog – no cow hides as these were exclusively available to tanners) were cleaned in a similar way to those used by tanners, and were then steeped in a paste made from alum, flour, oil and egg yolks. The skins were trampled to ensure that the paste penetrated the skin fully. Alum was an expensive ingredient brought by traders from the Mediterranean, most specifically from Greece.
The skins were then slaked or perched. Slaking entailed drawing it over a semi-circular blunt blade set into a wooden block. This helped to soften the hide and make it supple. Perching entailed draping the skin across a frame or ‘perch’, then scraping with a blade. Tawyers were also permitted to process the skins from ‘casualty’ animals – animals that had died of natural causes – as well as those skins removed during butchery.
It is interesting to note that tawed leather, the softer leather that was not tanned but preserved with fats and oils, was not subject to this level of scrutiny. Glovers, purse-makers, coffer-makers, stationers and similar artisans were largely unregulated in this way, and as a result there are records to show that the market was flooded with ‘counterfeit leather’ and poor quality, badly preserved soft leather goods. Despite all the rules surrounding tanning and leatherworking, there were still massive problems. In 1372, the mayor of London instituted penalties for the preparation and sale of sheep and calf leather that had been scraped and dyed to look like roe leather. Tawyers who worked for furriers were made liable to imprisonment if they prepared old furs into leather; they were also not allowed to remove heads from the skins they dressed, so that it was impossible to pass one type of animal skin off as another.
English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products
Once processed, the leather was cut and stitched with waxed thread to make a wide variety of items, such as shoes. It was stuck to wooden items such as boxes with animal glue, often made from the very hooves and flesh scrapings that had been the by-products of the tanning trade. Leather was also moulded into different shapes. This entailed soaking the leather to saturation point then, once it became stretchy and elastic, moulding it over forms made from wood, metal or plaster. The leather could be decorated whilst damp by stamping or embossing. It was then allowed to dry slowly and would stay in the shape of the form used. This method was used very effectively to make containers for liquids, such as bottles and buckets, or tankards and other drinking vessels.
Another moulding process used in the period was a method called cuir bouilli. It was sometimes used to make items of armour. It has been suggested (Cheshire, 2014) that the cuir bouilli method used rawhide which was warmed in water. Translated from the Norman French, cuir means ‘skin’, and boilli means ‘boiled’. This has sometimes led to confusion, with the translation being ‘boiled leather’, and of course boiled leather armour would be useless as it would be brittle and unable to combat fired arrows. That has led some commentators to imagine that cuir bouilli refers to moulded leather, as detailed above. Cheshire (2014, 80) also suggested that in some parts of the medieval world, notably Palestine, cuir bouilli was made with rawhide but then an extra layer made from crushed stone and glue was added for extra protection. This method, tested in the modern era by Cheshire’s team, makes a material that resists penetration from fired arrows up to six times more than leather alone. The distinctive lamellar armour worn traditionally by Japanese Samurai was made from scales made from boiled rawhide treated using this method (as well as metals such as iron) which made very strong, protective armour.
Medieval shoemakers were subject to regulations and inspection in the same way as the tanners were. Shoemakers at the time came in three groups: cordwainers, corvesers and cobblers. Cordwainers and corvesors made new shoes from leather and cobblers repaired shoes or made shoes from reclaimed and recycled leather. Cordwainers were the ‘designer label’ shoe makers of the era, with their name being derived originally from the Spanish workers of Cordovan leather. At the other end of the scale in terms of shoemakers were the cobblers, who were permitted to mend shoes, but not to make them from new leather. In 1409 regulations were introduced in London to stop any overlap of these two types of shoe making, enforcing a division between the two crafts.
Leather could be highly ornamented in the medieval era. It was often coloured with dye; red was particularly popular. It was also sometimes painted with tempera, which was made from pigment mixed with some sort of water-soluble binder such as egg yolk. In bookbinding, it was also often gilded, with either glaire – egg white – or gold size being used to attach gold leaf. Leather was also embossed and stamped, incised, punched and embossed to make patterns and shapes for decorative purposes.
So, in the Medieval era, leather continued to be an important commodity in terms of usage and trade. Regulations were introduced to govern the production and working of leather, but these were not always effective. The use of leather working for book binding in the era increased hugely, and new ways of decorating and finishing leather were introduced, paving the way for the lavish work of the Tudor leather industry to come.