Getting a far from healthy tanning
"If you don't behave, I'll tan your hide!" I can hear her now, Trixie, my poor mum who rarely lost her temper.
But when she did this was how she would threaten me when I was a naughty little David.
I didn't have a clue what she meant then, but I do now.
Having learned a little more about the tanning industry recently, I realise it would have been a fate worse than death!
I am lucky enough to be part of "The Ambassadors", a group of people invited by Northamptonshire Enterprises Ltd to learn more about Northamptonshire, its industry and heritage with a view to enthusing about it to others here and abroad.
Last week we visited the Tannery and Conservation Departments within the British School of Leather Technology (BSLT), now part of The University of Northampton.
It was absolutely rivetting.
It's run by amazingly enthusiastic specialists who have spent their lives in the trade and who now pass their knowledge on to students from all over the world.
This year The University of Northampton will be celebrating the unique contribution the BSLT has made in leading the world in leather technology and design, since it was established 100 years ago.
The celebration is being launched in Hong Kong at the end of March with further events in China, Pakistan, Germany, Spain, Italy and India, some of the modern centres of shoe manufacture.
But there will be events right here in the county, so watch the pages of this paper as the months go on.
The tannery, we were told, is a miniature version of a real one; however it looked pretty impressive to me.
It's equipped with massive machinery and several huge drums.
Some of the machines slice skins into two useable layers (remember those fringed suede shirts you used to wear?), others impress skins with patterns, others dry the skins.
One vertical frame had skins air-drying as they would have in centuries past, with skins stretched on pierced metal screening with lots of "pins" holding them taut.
Each of the huge drums contained some kind of chemical treating the skin in some way, washing, dyeing or another of the many processes.
The smell was, as you might imagine, pretty ripe and we were told it can be even more so on occasions!
In the conservation area, two magnificent vintage motor cars were waiting to have their original leather seats treated. Not recovered or re-upholstered. No, the leather was being conserved by special processes to keep the integrity of the historic vehicles intact.
Here, experts and students alike work on leather-bound books and, most interestingly, have even worked on a leather case containing a small silver Communion chalice and paten used in the trenches during World War One by an army chaplain.
Most impressive of all was that, in a state-of-the-art building complex, every aspect of Northamptonshire's most ancient and traditional trade was being passed on to a new generation.
And what is ironic is that many of those trades are no longer practised here.
Indeed, one of the tanning experts told us that many years ago his Northampton firm sent him to India to set up a tannery there.
This he did, and within a short time of his return the factory back here in Northampton closed down!
That's the way the leather business has changed.
But, against all odds, Northampton is still home to the finest shoes in the world and this year's centenary celebrations will carry that message round the globe.
Next week I shall look back at the history of Northamptonshire's tanneries.
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Friday 10 February 2012
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