During the First World War, leather was used for many of the things a soldier would need in the course of his duty – boots, bags and special leather jerkins. These were like body warmers, to help keep the soldier warm and dry. These jerkins, made from leather and lined with khaki wool, helped to insulate against cold and wet.
K.J. Adcock, writing in 1915, in Leather: From the Raw Material to the Finished Product, described the way that the tanning and leatherworking industries were still at the time tied in closely to meat production. Adcock described sheep skins as numerous, ‘as Great Britain is a big muttonconsuming country’, but complained that the number of home-produced hides and skins had been greatly reduced as a result of the increase in import of frozen meat from overseas. The author also bemoaned the British tradition for leaving rind on bacon and pork, as this reduced the quantity of pig skins available for the manufacture of leather!
Adcock complained that the reluctance of the British consumer to cook goat meat meant that this skin was mainly imported for use in the British leather industry, bemoaning the fact that goats could easily be farmed in great numbers in hilly regions of Britain where other less hardy and adaptable animals found it hard to thrive. At the time, goat hides were imported from the Middle and Far east, Austria, Spain and the Cape. It is interesting to note that the author explained that nine-tenths of the ‘kid gloves’ worn by elegant ladies of the era were in fact made from sheep skin rather than actual kid skin. This did not mean the leather was of a lesser quality; it did however make for a leather that was less durable. Actual goat skin was made into bookbinding material, upholstery, purses, bags, wallets and belts. The writer also described the way in which a great number of skins were exported, despite the needs of British tanners not being met:
‘Although the domestic supply of hides and skins is quite inadequate to meet the needs of British tanners, a large proportion is exported. American tanners buy large quantities of the best hides and pickled sheep skins. The latter are de-woolled and preserved by a process of pickling with formic or sulphuric acid and salt before exportation. Those preliminary operations are the work of the fellmonger. Nearly all of the horse hides produced in the United Kingdom are, or were before the War, sent to Germany, and British leather-dressers appear to have lost the art of finishing horse hide, or are unable to convert it into leather profitably.’
It is astonishing for the modern reader to read a First World War era account of the conflict between intensive farming methods and other needs, but this is not just a modern concern. Adcock explained that the needs of the farmer – cattle that mature and fatten swiftly – were at odds with the needs of tanners. The cows were fed the unattractively named ‘oil cakes’, and it was claimed that this led to greasy hides with weaker fibres. This devalued the leather and meant it needed to be soaked in borax before tanning, which reduced the weight of the hides. The same problem was identified in sheep skins, where oily foodstuffs given to the sheep matured them in ten months instead of the standard two years.
Adcock described the variety of ‘exotic’ leathers imported for use in the leatherworking industry, including such unusual leathers as alligator, walrus and hippopotamus hide. There was a great trade in seal skins from Newfoundland in America at the time, with an amazing 60,754 skins imported in 1913 according to an American Consular report.
Adcock also discussed vegetable tanning, claiming that oak bark was at this time supplemented with a variety of imported plant materials such as valonia acorn cups from Turkey, to make a stronger tanning solution and therefore a shorter tanning period. Mineral tanning was carried out with chrome salts, formaldehyde, salt, iron and alum, as well as the newly introduced titanium, cerium and potassium salts. In addition to these, an artificial tannin created by combining a sulphonated phenol with formaldehyde via a process of condensation was patented in Austria in 1911 by its developer, Dr Stiasny. The artificial tannin was called neradol, and was made under licence in Britain. It was expensive, with its cost doubling during the Great War.
The continuing development of machinery for leather production in this period had brought us to a place where, according to Adcock, that ‘for practically every operation in the trade most of the machines require very little skill to work them, and can be operated by intelligent youths after a few weeks’ experience.’ (p53 of Adcock’s book)
The hides were processed by being soaked in water, or a solution of borax in water, to clean them. If skins were obtained from the auction mart rather than directly from the butcher, they would have been salted to stop them rotting. This would require a longer soak to ensure that the salt was removed, as this would hinder the tanning process.
The next stage was the removal of hair. This was carried out with a variety of harmful and noxious substances such as lime, caustic soda, red arsenic sulphide, known as realgar, and sulphite of sodium. These chemicals were dangerous for the workers, as they dissolved keratinous matter such as hair and horn – and fingernails. After the hides had been soaked in the solution for between six days and a month, they were ready for scraping. Some scraping was still done by hand, with a traditional double handed blade, but many tanneries had introduced machinery by this period. The most popular was the Leidgen, as it could de-hair skins as well as a person employed to do so by hand at a quicker speed. The machine’s use entailed setting the skin on a bed of felt, and feeding it through a roller. Spiral blades then removed the hairs quickly and efficiently.
After de-hairing, the hides were fleshed. That means they had scraps of flesh and fat scraped away. The ‘fleshings’, or ‘spetches’, were collected together in a weak lime solution, to stop them from rotting, until there was enough to send away to the glue factory to be boiled down into glue. In larger tanneries, glue was made on the same premises as a saleable by-product. After fleshing, the hides were de-limed. This was necessary to avoid the neutralisation of the acidic tanning liquor. In some factories, this still happened in large drums connected by pipes to a running water supply. In other, more ‘modern’ factories, science offered a different answer. Lime is alkali; an acid could be used to neutralise it. The skins were plunged into acid baths and great care needed to be taken to avoid the leather being over exposed and degraded. One would hope that the factory workers were protected too from this dangerous practice.
Incredibly, skins were still put in baths of a solution made with pigeon droppings for bating, before scudding. Calf skin was still puered with dog dung, and goat skin for kid leather or glacé kid (a kind of glazed, patented leather) needed the most puering of all, to make it soft and supple. However, science was beginning to offer alternatives to droppings and dung. Oropon was a mixture of trypsin, or pancreatin, and ammonium salts bulked out with sawdust as a carrier. The pancreatin was extracted from pig intestine, and had the effect of making the leather supple; the ammonium salts were used as a cleanser. This artificial bating material worked more quickly and was cleaner in use. Other chemicals being introduced in the US were Erodin and Puerine, a weak acid mixed with malt enzymes. The hides were scudded to remove fats and scum. Knives were still used for the scudding process. The scudding tool was a convex piece of either slate or vulcanite, a hard black rubber material, which was fitted into a handle for use. In some factories, skins were then drenched; treated with a solution of wheat bran or pea flour in water to further neutralise any remaining lime and to remove the last traces of scud. After rinsing, the skins would then be ready for tanning.
In the early part of the twentieth century, vegetable tanning using oak bark was still used in Britain, despite the drive for more artificial, efficient and cheaper solutions to be found via the laboratory. However, there was some move away from using plant materials in tanneries, instead using their extracts which were supplied by manufacturers solely engaged in their production. The extracts were dissolved in water at the tanneries to make the tanning solution.
Hides were rounded or trimmed, and then passed through a series of pits of tanning solution, starting weaker and then increasing in concentration. The hides were suspended on poles, attached by copper hooks or cords. Several different mechanical methods were used in different factories to move the hides through the liquor, such as a device that raised and lowered the skin to ensure equal coverage and uniformity of colour. In Britain hides were still mostly removed from pits and stacked to drain by hand at this time, however, which was expensive in terms of labour cost. Mechanisation had superseded human workforce in some areas where lighter grade leather was tanned using paddle or drum methods, which kept the skins and liquors moving to ensure even tanning.
Tanning was also done by ‘mineral tannage’, mainly using chrome, and carried out using mechanical means such as the drum tumbler or paddle-vat. Sometimes, combination tanning was employed. This could be a combination of chemical and vegetable tanning, or a combination of two chemical means of tanning. Tragasol, another chemist-driven development, was introduced in the rush to make tanning leather more efficient. This gummy product was extracted from vegetable seeds and used in the textiles industry for strengthening and sizing fabrics. It was found to increase the tensile strength of leather, and its addition to the tanning drum made consistent tanning easier to achieve. This saved time and labour costs. Tragasol increased the water resistance of leather massively. In tests, leather tanned with the addition of this substance was water resistant under six weeks of continuous exposure, compared to a few hours with ordinarily vegetable tanned leather.
The next step in the process was draining and drying the hides, usually in dark sheds, before finishing. The skins were then oiled with cod oil, linseed or mineral oil also being used. The oil was applied with a brush or swab and then the hide was hung up to dry again, until it was in a sammed condition – damp, but exuding no excess water. Then it would be pinned – scraped again to remove scum. In the early part of the twentieth century this was sometimes done by hand, with a knife, but mostly by machine. Machinery with rollers was used to clean and flatten the skins, which were then dried again, and sized with colourant such as annatto or turmeric, or chalk dissolved in white vinegar. The hides would then be polished with flannel.
During the Second World War the jerkins were still being made as standard issue. The Battle Jerkin was developed in 1942 by Colonel Rivers-McPherson. Still made from leather, this jerkin was a modified hunting vest. It had many pockets and was invaluable for assault troops despatched during the Normandy landings. In the US, the Shearling leather flying jackets and regulation leather boots were also part of the kit for every US airman. Leather was also used by the United States Air Force during the Second World War for an ingenious purpose: to make self-sealing leather fuel tanks for planes from chromium tanned leather.
Since the war effort was using so much of the leather being produced, there was less available on the home front. This was especially true for leather needed for boots, jackets and more. The government also wanted to release factory workers to fight, and wanted to utilise factory production for the war effort, so they put controls on production. Clothes rationing was announced by Oliver Lyttelton, President of the Board of Trade on 1 June 1941. This rationing scheme allocated items of clothing a ‘points’ value according to how much material was used, and how much labour the item took to produce. At first, people were allocated sixty-six points a year, but this fell to forty-eight in 1942, then to thirty-six by 1943. By 1945, the allocation was only twenty-four points for the year as materials became scarce and the workforce were depleted. When you consider that men’s shoes were ‘worth’ nine points and women’s shoes were ‘worth’ seven, new shoes were a luxury indeed.
Shoes were of course mended regularly and made to last for as long as possible. Iron studs were often hammered into the leather to reduce wear and many people had shoe repair kits and tools at home to prolong the life of their precious shoes. ‘Utility’ wear shoes were simple and plain, and used as little leather as possible, so that leather was not diverted from ‘the war effort’.
After the war, once clothes rationing was lifted in March 1949, there were moves away from plain utility clothing and a return to high fashion. Styles for women became hyper-feminine, with nipped waists, full skirts and slim, gravity-defying stiletto heeled shoes. Slim heeled shoes had been around as a style since the 1930s, in 1954 Roger Vivier, a French designer working with Christian Dior introduced needle thin heeled shoes, popularly known as ‘stilettos’. They had an internal steel or alloy stem to strengthen them. Other sources suggest that stiletto heels began with Salvatore Ferragamo, but whoever ‘invented’ them, they were a feat of engineering! As the shoes developed, injection moulding was used to encase metal posts in plastic to make them ‘safe’ to wear.
Leather jackets exploded onto the scene as a fashion item for young men in the 1950s thanks to Hollywood stars such as Marlon Brando wearing a Harley Davidson Perfecto jacket, designed by Irving Schott onscreen in The Wild One and James Dean in his leather jacketed ‘bad boy’ role in Rebel Without a Cause. Added to this, the rise of the phenomenon of the ‘teenager’ in the 1950s with money to spend on their own fashionable clothes aided in the rise of popularity of the leather jacket as a decorative rather than military or serviceable workwear item.
Historically, leather trousers had been worn by workmen and cowboys. These hardwearing trousers would last for decades – and would never be cleaned. Just let that sink in for a moment. In the second half of the twentieth century, leather trousers experienced something of a renaissance. Bikers would wear thick, leather trousers to protect themselves from spills onto the road, but it was in the entertainment industry that leather trousers really made their mark. In 1960, US singer Eddie Cochrane wiggled onto British television wearing leather trousers, and nothing like it had been seen before. Later in the 60s, Jim Morrison would pick up the leather trousers look and make it his own, with a sexy, bohemian style, and then in 1968, Elvis ‘the pelvis’ Presley swirled and gyrated his leather clad way into history with his ‘comeback’ outfit, clad from head to toe in black leather. Leather has been associated with rock stars ever since!
Iggy Pop had silver leather trousers and Marc Bolan of T Rex rocked in orange leatherwear in the 1970s – and so it went on. It’s not just the boys who have made leatherwear iconic in the 70s; Joan Jett, Suzi Quatro and Chrissie Hynde made leather trousers the ultimate ‘rock chick’ look. Punks and New Romantics brought leather trousers out on to the high street, with Vivienne Westwood and Malcom McLaren dressing their entourage in strappy leather fetish and bondagewear: Siouxsie Sioux, Adam Ant, The Sex Pistols – and this inspired a generation of bright young things to don leather and make it their own.
Leather trousers are generally made from chrome tanned leather. Leather for trousers needs to be durable and robust, and the commonest skins used are cow hide, lamb, goatskin, and pig leather. Deerskin and even kangaroo skin have also been used widely.
So twentieth century leathercraft took us, in the west, through two World Wars, where leather was vital to the survival of troops and affected the ‘war effort’. It then moved, via style icons of the screen and the music industry, into the realms of street fashion, accessible by all. Leather jackets and shoes became the part of every wardrobe. It was used for upholstery in homes and cars and this most ancient of materials is still widely used today.