Water workshop

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The water workshop is a term from the craft of tannery . It originally referred to a work area located directly on the water, which did not necessarily have to be on the property of the tannery. Since the 18th century, the term water workshop has become a synonym for all activities and process steps before the actual tanning process. The use of running water also plays a major role here.

requirements

A tanner needs large quantities of good quality water for his daily work. Water with a high degree of hardness is unsuitable for tanning. Groundwater and surface water from streams and canals are the most frequently used types of water, which is why tanner's workshops have always been located in districts that are located directly on streams, open moats or rivers.

Operations in the water workshop

Hair removal and flesh removal on the gerber tree (single-leaf print, 1568)

The animal skins and pelts bought by fur traders, skinners or butchers are known in technical jargon as green skins and first of all require a thorough cleaning procedure.

The following operations were carried out in a classic tannery in the water workshop:

  • Soaking - when soaking in water, blood and dirt must be removed from the pelts / skins, salt and similar preservatives have been removed. The soluble proteins from the skin are dissolved. The hides should be brought back to their natural fullness and suppleness.
  • Hair loosening - the liming method is an old hair loosening method . In the past, wood ash was used alongside lime, hence the name liming . In traditional hair loosening methods until the second third of the 19th century, only lime was used. When sweating , a thick paste consisting of chemicals that loosened the hair was applied to the skins and pelts. Steaming is particularly suitable when valuable hair, such as sheep's wool, should be obtained as undamaged as possible.
  • Soaking - the remnants of liming or swelling were removed by rinsing in running water for hours.
  • Enthaaren - the rinsed hides or skins have now been depilated manually on the top, the skins were on the Gerber tree down and the tanner to the shear iron , the razor and shaving sword edited.
  • Removing the flesh - the underside of the hides / hides also had to be processed, for this purpose the previously removed piece of hair was turned over and the adhering fiber residues were scraped off.
  • Descaling - it was used to completely remove the residues that had penetrated the deeper layers of the skin during liming or swelling.
  • Pickling - with pickling the dermis is loosened and prepared for the absorption of the tanning agent.
  • Emphasize - in the epidermis remaining hair roots , hair pigments, basic hair and fatty substances can be used alone not be removed by washing or rinsing. In the craft business, the hides are painted on the tanner tree with a painting iron .
  • Swelling, swelling and pickling - mechanical and chemical working techniques, they serve to open up the skin pores as much as possible.

This completed the preparatory work on the skins; the skins prepared in the water workshop are called pelts in technical jargon . In today's industrial tannery, machines perform a number of these work steps.

Photos from tannery museums

  • The door to the water workshop is still there (Weida / Thuringia)

  • Various tools / skin irons (Hagen / Westphalia)

  • Partially depilated fur on the gerber tree (Hagen / Westphalia)

  • Water workshop in a Welsh tannery (St. Fagans)

Dippoldiswalde exhibition area

The museum of the city of Dippoldiswalde near Dresden is located on the site of the former Ulbrich tannery. An old tanner's workshop is shown as a stationary display facility, the workshop rooms are largely true to the original and functional, and furnished according to the state of technological development at the end of the 18th century.

“On the ground floor, in a vaulted room with a water channel, you will find the water workshop with 4 ashtrays and in the neighboring room the 55 m² tannery with 11 pits. Tools and equipment such as liming tongs, shears, swords, tanner trees, trestles and boilers complete the milieu of these rooms. The tanning pits are partially filled with offsets. The floor of both production rooms on the first floor is covered with sandstone slabs. Gutters arranged in the floor were used to drain liquids. The tan broth could be drained from the pits through openings in the floor into channels of the barrel-vaulted cellar. "

Exile from the city

The organic residues, always in large quantities, attracted flies, rats and other vermin . In summer tanneries gave off the most disgusting smells. The city leaders therefore felt compelled to ban the tanner's workshops from the (walled) city; they were only allowed to practice their honorable but disreputable craft in commercial suburbs or in the outskirts of the city.

saying

The proverbial advice is aimed at an occasional mishap of the tanner while working in the water workshop:

"Don't let your skins swim away!"

literature

  • Paul Brockhoff: According to the rules of art: Old craft in Westphalia . Aschendorf Verlag, Münster 1996, ISBN 3-402-05259-8 , Gerber, p. 98-103 .
  • Günter Groß : ... and how was it before? From one of the oldest trades and the leather's career . Ed .: Lohgerber-Stadt- und Kreismuseum Dippoldiswalde. Self-published, Dippoldiswalde 1991, p. 112 .
  • Günter Groß: (museum guide) Dippoldiswalde tanner museum . Self-published, Dippoldiswalde 1985, p. 36 .
  • Klaus Schlottau: From the artisanal tannery to the leather factory of the 19th century - to the importance of renewable raw materials for the history of industrialization . Leske and Budrich, Opladen 1993, ISBN 3-8100-1172-X , p. 324 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Günter Groß : Dippoldiswalde Tanner Museum . Self-published, Dippoldiswalde 1985, p. 15-17 .
  2. ↑ Günter Groß: ... and how was it before? From one of the oldest trades and the leather's career . Ed .: Lohgerber-Stadt- und Kreismuseum Dippoldiswalde. Self-published, Dippoldiswalde 1991, Reime und Sprüche, p. 88 .