Clothing shoes, boots, moccasins, galoshes leggings, breeches, aprons shirts, coats, caps, hats, gloves belts, suspenders, points and laces fur items, fur trim Shelter and furnishings tents, tepees wall hangings, door curtains chair seats and backs, beds upholstery, cushion covers fur rugs, fur bedding Transportation saddles, bridles, harness (including that for human porters) carriage upholstery, wagon covers scupper leathers, antichafing binding on sailing gear Containers, liquid wineskins, waterbags, bottles jugs, mugs, buckets inkwells and inkhorns hoses, pipes Containers, dry bags, purses, food pouches trunks, boxes, caskets, coffers snuff boxes, dice cups Military items shields, scabbards, sheaths bowcases, quivers, gun buckets helmets, cartridge boxes powder horns and buckets Other bookbinding, parchment, vellum hornbooks, bellows, hinges pump washers, airtight floats spinning-wheel belts cricket balls, drumheads, banjos surgical trusses Leather differs not only according to the species of creature it comes from but according to the age and sometimes the sex of the animal, and also the part of the animal’s body it once covered. Its characteristics vary depending on the type of processing it undergoes—whether by liming, tanning, tawing (mineral tanning), or shamoying (oil tanning)—and depending on how these processes are varied and combined. Leather can be stiff as bone or supple as silk, nearly as waterproof as rubber or capable of sopping up water like a sponge, tough and unyielding or resilient and stretchy, smooth and translucent as paper, deeply grained in many patterns, or softly napped. It may be snowwhite or range through hues of tan and red to dark brown. It may be molded, carved, and colored in endless array. As leatherworkers for many centuries have been fond of reminding the world, “There’s nothing like leather.” _THERE’S NOTHING LIKE TANNING_ Homer’s _Iliad_ contains what may be the earliest surviving literary reference to leathermaking. Describing the swaying fight for possession of Patroclus’s corpse, the author (in Pope’s translation) wrote: As when the slaughter’d bull’s yet reeking hide, Strain’d with full force, and tugged from side to side The brawny curriers stretch; and labour o’er The extended surface, drunk with fat and gore.... The untidy process here alluded to as currying was doubtless one of man’s first methods of making leather. It consisted of laboriously working into a hide or skin such greasy and albuminous substances as animal fats, brains, blood, milk, and so forth. The product, although technically not “leather,” had many of leather’s characteristics; this is a paradox that calls for some definitions. In the terminology of the trade: