the National Leather Museum

For the first time since we live in #offenbach we went to the National Leather Museum. It’s located here because Offenbach used to be a famous leather tooling city. The knowledge of leather craft was brought here by our very first immigrants 400 years ago, the Huguenot people, who were French protestants and had to flee their native catholic country and were welcomed here by the Earl of Isenburg who then ruled the city.

In the entrance there is a complete crocodile skin. It’s ancient and it’s huge!
In the main room on the ground floor you can feel and read up about the different leather types and ways of crafting them into useful products. They have very unusual leathers there, from sting ray to elephant or even seal fur. It’s a bit painful to see the leather of the more endangered species but thankfully this is (here) a thing of the past and leather trade is very much restricted nowadays. Also, there is now new plant based leather, there was a material made from fungi even!
I loved seeing the different tools used for the leather, and some exhibits were really cute, funny or impressive. Look at the mini boots made by the Inupiat in Alaska, pic 5, aren’t they super cute? Then we have a leather wallpaper, artfully imprinted and coloured, a real show piece!
There also was a pirate ship, expensive bags and suitcases, and a temporary exhibition about gloves. I never knew that there was so much to be said about gloves but boy was I mistaken! It’s apparently an art in itself. I liked best the fur gloves that seemed to be alive and chatting to each other, so funny! I also took a pic of a baseball glove for my American friends. There was so much more but, being restricted to 10 pics, I hope this gave you at least an impression of the place. I was very pleased that I now finally got to visit!
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