.DAWN

The tannery is, without a doubt, one of the human activities of remoter origins. The skins obtained from the hunting and the breeding of animals, at the beginnig, were used like garments or curtains, but they had two disadvantages: to the low temperatures they became rigid and they were rotted by the heat. Here therefore the necessity to find of the solutions in order to make them unalterable. It was begun, probably, to deal them with some fat in order to make them more flexible and resistant. An other ancient procedure was that one of the blackening with smoke that, later on, was transformed in the tannery “to the aldehyde”, an element present in vapors develops from the combustion of leaves or green limbs. But one discovered soon that better results could be obtained with the drying up. The tannery vegetable, in turn, was already known in the farthest ages, thanks to the tanning power of the tannin contained in the bark of  some plants (above all in the oak tree). The last method of which we have news is that one of the tannery to alum, a mineral enough diffused  in nature, particularly in the vulcanic zones, that it gave origin to the tannery “to alludes it”. These procedures, afterwards more improved and effective, they were to the base of the possibility of employment of the leather skins in the ancient world and they keep being it for centuries.  

FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO OUR DAYS  

 During the Eighth century d.C., in Spain then conquered by the Moors, the production of “Cordovan”, a type of leather that,thanks to important progresses in the tannery, became famous in all Europe. The ability to work the skins was not prerogative of the western world, testifies it also Marco Polo. In “the Million” he narrates that the Mongoli used flaskes of leather, blankets, masks and caps artisticly decorated, and he spoke for the first time of the term “leather of Russia”, in order to indicate that type of skin from the characteristic odor. An sensitive improvement in the working procedures was recorded in the Twelfth century, since that, from then, and until to the last century,substantial modifications in the tannery systems did not take part. More or less in the medieval period it was discovered, in fact, the depilating effect of the alive lime, one technical still in use. But a true discovery, that it made to record a remarkable productive improvement, was taken place instead towards the half of the 1800's with the discovery of the power tanning of salt of chromium, that they had practical application in the industrial production. An other revolutionary element was the substitution of the bathtubs for the tannery with the revolving bottals, joined to the discovery of new types of tannins. All these innovations made way that the necessary time to the tannery reduced a lot.