tanning

tanning process by which skins and hides are converted into leather . Vegetable tanning, a method requiring more than a month even with modern machinery and tanning liquors, employs tannin; its use is shown in Egyptian tomb paintings dating from 3000 BC Mineral tanning includes tawing, or alum tanning, another ancient method, and chrome tanning, the process most common today, based on the use of chrome salts and requiring only a few hours. Known as early as 1856, chrome tanning was first patented in the United States by Augustus Schultz in 1884. In oil tanning, or chamoising, the pelts are treated with fats and hung to dry; the leather is commonly napped on both sides and is very absorbent. The most recently developed tanning process employs artificial agents (syntans). Most heavy leathers, such as sole leather, are vegetable tanned; many light leathers are chrome tanned. The Native Americans of North America used the chamois method, employing the fat, livers, and brains of animals. Their tanned white buckskin was highly esteemed, especially for clothing, both by Native Americans and by colonial pioneers. In the tanyards of European settlers tanners used oak and hemlock bark; gallnuts; the wood, nuts, and leaves of the chestnut tree; and the leaves of sumac.

tanning was a significant industry during the 18th century; by 1796, there were 876 operative tanners in the country. New excise laws in 1798 and 1813 eliminated many smaller tanners and contributed to the concentration of the industry in bigger tanyards in the larger towns; Cork and Dublin were the main centres. However, decline wasevident by the 1840s; the growing export of live cattle reduced the supply of hides; the fall in population in the post‐ Famine years and British penetration of the Irish market for boots, shoes, and other leather goods reduced demand. In particular imports of cheaper British sole leather and prepared uppers, produced in English yards utilizing the best technologies and chemicals to increase productivity, undermined much of the Irish tanning trade. A few large yards survived by adopting new methods; but there were only eighteen tanning firms in the whole country by 1902. Limerick at this stage had displaced Cork as the main centre of the industry, specializing in sole and harness leather; there were others in this trade in Derry, New Ross, and Ballitore, while centres of upper and harness leather included Belfast, Newry, Coleraine, Drogheda, Dunmanway, Bantry, Clonmel, Mountmellick, and Richhill. These surviving firms tended to be larger and more highly capitalized than the typical tanyard of the early 19th century, and they could compete with British imports.

Andrew Bielenberg