Why Leather?: The Material and Cultural Dimensions of Leather

This pioneering volume brings together specialists from contemporary craft and industry and from archaeology to examine both the material properties and the cultural dimensions of leather. The common occurrence of animal skin products through time, whether vegetable tanned leather, parchment, vellum, fat-cured skins or rawhide attest to its enduring versatility, utility and desirability. Typically grouped together as ‘leather’, the versatility of these materials is remarkable: they can be soft and supple like a textile, firm and rigid like a basket, or hard and watertight like a pot or gourd. This volume challenges a simple utilitarian or functional approach to leather; in a world of technological and material choices, leather is appropriated according to its suitability on many levels. In addressing the question Why leather? authors of this volume present new perspectives on the material and cultural dimensions of leather. Their wide-ranging research includes the microscopic examination of skin structure and its influence on behaviour, experiments on medieval cuir bouilli armour, the guild secrets behind the leather components of nineteenth-century industrial machinery, new research on ancient Egyptian chariot leather, the relationship between wine and wineskins, and the making of contemporary leather wall covering.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction. Leather in Archaeology; Between material properties, materiality and technological choices
Susanna Harris

Chapter 2. Skin deep: An outline of the structure of different skins and how it influences behaviour in use. A practitioner’s guide
Amanda Michel

Chapter 3. Cuir bouilli armour
Eddie Cheshire

Chatper 4. Bespoke vellum: Some unusual requests
Laura Youngson Coll

Chapter 5. Leather in the textile industry – A memoir
Alan S. Raistrick

Chapter 6. Why Leather in ancient Egyptian chariots?
André J. Veldmeijer & Salima Ikram

Chapter 7. Why wineskins? The exploration of a relationship between wine and a skin container
Barbara Wills & Amanda Watts

"Dr. André J. Veldmeijer (Visiting Research Scholar American University in Cairo) studied archaeology at Leiden University (The Netherlands) and received his PhD in Vertebrate Palaeontology from Utrecht University (The Netherlands) in 2006. He has worked in Egypt since 1995 as a leather, footwear and cordage specialist for various missons (including Amarna, Berenike, Dra’ Abu el-Naga, Elephantine, Hierakonpolis and Qasr Ibrim). Veldmeijer has also worked in several collections all over the world, studying ancient Egyptian and Nubian leatherwork and footwear as part of the Ancient Egyptian Leatherwork Project (AELP) and the Ancient Egyptian Footwear Project (AEFP) respectively. Among these collections are the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the British Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His second PhD, on the archaeology of footwear, is planned for the next four years.

Veldmeijer is the director of two ongoing research projects: Ancient Egyptian Leatherwork Project (including the Egyptian Museum Chariot Project) and Ancient Egyptian Footwear Project. Veldmeijer is one of the founders and current chairman of the PalArch Foundation."