The Puering, Bating & Drenching of Skins

In 1912, a leather tradesman named Joseph Turney Wood sat down to preserve two decades of hard-won knowledge. The result is this meticulous manual, a snapshot of an industry in transformation. Leather tanning is ancient, but Wood's generation witnessed something new: the emergence of scientific understanding replacing generations of oral tradition. Here, enzymes are not mystical agents but living processes explained through bacteriology. Puering, bating, and drenching are not just techniques but chemical equilibria to be understood and controlled. The book reads like a craftsman anxious to codify his life's work before the old ways vanish entirely. Wood describes the smell of the yard, the feel of properly limed hide, the patience required to nurture bacterial cultures into effective bates. What emerges is not dry technical prose but a passionate argument for why science and tradition must work together. For historians of technology, for craft enthusiasts, for anyone curious about the material history of everyday objects, this book reveals the astonishing labor and knowledge that went into something as common as a leather shoe.