Figure 6. — Tanner's and Currier's Knives, ca. 1800. The leather workers' knives 

 shown above are from Pattern and Design Book 87 of Furniss, Cutler and 

 Stacev, Sheffield, England. Original in the Victoria and Albert Museum 



(M63i). 



materials into finished products. L-astlv, as Siegfried Giedion 

 suggests, the unsuccessful appHcation of the machine to organic 

 material, such as an animal's hide, proved vexing; -"so much so 

 that perhaps it is safe to conclude that, though ideas for improve- 

 ment were prolific, accomplishment remained so remote that few 

 commercial interests would disrupt their slow but successful 

 methods merely to "modernize." 



Some Americans, it is true, tried chemically and mechanically 

 to speed and to ease the manufacture of leather, although generally 

 it was from Europe that ideas for advances came. But what of 

 the majority of tanneries? How, for instance, in their "rude 

 appointments" amidst scattered hogsheads and blind horses was 

 leather tanned? From the earliest times, the rudimentary facilities 



'^ Mechanization Takes Command, pp. 229-232. 



17 



