What is Leather Technology?

Leather was one of the first manufactured materials, and the Leather Technologist can claim to be a member of an ancient profession. The output and quality of leather has steadily increased and improved for at least the last 3,000 years, and for the last 100 years or so the UK has been a pioneer in the field of formal education and training in Leather Technology.

Leather was one of the first manufactured materials, and the Leather Technologist can claim to be a member of an ancient profession. The output and quality of leather has steadily increased and improved for at least the last 3,000 years, and for the last 100 years or so the UK has been a pioneer in the field of formal education and training in Leather Technology.

Leather is turned into a wide variety of articles - footwear, clothing, bookbinding, gloves, saddles, harness, belts, wallets, luggage, bags, gas meter diaphragms, driving belts, gaskets, hydraulic seals used in aircraft, rockets and underwater craft, upholstery including automobiles, sports goods and many others. Tanners keep the end use very much in mind, and since many of the uses are subject to fashion, such features as eye-appeal, colour, texture and drape, while difficult to quantify, are essential to success. Using modern techniques of production engineering, tanners must retain the individuality of each skin and, without losing its appeal, produce leather to a degree of uniformity required by customers.

Although the leather industry has a long history, the pace of change has been rapid in the twentieth century, and accelerating in the last decade. The time required to process raw hide or skin to finished leather has decreased from over a year to a matter of days. Quality, variety and consistency of product have improved in response to customer demand.

While remembering its craft past, the leather industry is now firmly established as a technology based on scientific principles. From the early 1900s, the scope and depth of knowledge of protein chemistry and of the other natural and synthetic products used in leather manufacture have advanced at an accelerating pace. The Leather Technologist has become familiar with a wide range of pure and applied sciences, and with the constitution and properties of many types of material.

To produce high quality leather, Technologists must understand the nature of the materials used, the way in which they react, the means of controlling this reactivity, and the methods of testing and analysing the finished product. With this knowledge as a basis, tanners must become familiar with all the practical tanning processes and machinery operations that are necessary to prepare the skins for tanning, the tanning process itself, and the many subsequent operations which determine thickness, softness, texture, colour and waterproof-ness of leather. View More