In the Boston Art Museum there is a beautiful coat of white antelope that was made in Egypt about 3000 B.C. Tannin liquors were used from tomb paintings by the Egyptian craftsmen to transform animal skins into leather. Other methods were used by the ancients to process and preserve skins and hides. They include the use of grease or oil, minerals, alum and even smoke. But that 5,000-year-old vegetable tannin method, at least in principle, is used to this day.

Leather upholstery was favored in the Renaissance, particularly by the Spanish and English. Spanish craftsmen developed techniques for embossing, tooling, painting and gliding leather in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which produced many useful and ornamental articles. Since the equipment required was relatively simple, tanning was essentially a home industry and methods of preparing leather changed little for centuries. Toward the end of the 18th century, however, the Industrial Revolution brought about great changes. Ingenious machines were in-vented and new techniques were developed; large factories gradually replaced small establishments.