author
Joseph Turney Wood
1865–1924
Best known for a detailed classic on leather processing, this Nottingham chemist brought scientific rigor to a trade that was often learned purely by practice. His work sits at the meeting point of industry, chemistry, and everyday manufacturing life in late Victorian and early 20th-century England.
1 Audiobook
The Puering, Bating & Drenching of Skins
by Joseph Turney Wood
About the author
Joseph Turney Wood was an English chemist and leather specialist associated with Nottingham’s long-running tanning industry. Reliable sources describe him as a director of Turney Brothers Limited, and the title pages of his best-known work also identify him as an examiner in leather tanning, dressing of skins, and leather dyeing for the City and Guilds of London Institute, as well as a member of the International Association of Leather Trades Chemists.
He is best remembered for The Puering, Bating & Drenching of Skins, a technical study of the processes used to prepare hides for leather making. The book shows how closely he connected hands-on trade knowledge with chemical investigation, helping explain and improve methods that were central to the leather industry.
Later accounts of his life note that he was born in Nottingham in 1865, apprenticed at his uncle’s tannery, and left diaries spanning 1887 to 1923 that shed light on both his working life and his private life in the city. No clearly verified portrait image was found in the sources reviewed here.