"leather color through the ages" Topic

I was wondering about the color of leather straps and boots through the ages. I am painting some ECW cavalry and most of the pics I see show their boots in a light to mid range brown color. Napoleonics all seem to be black. What caused this change? Leather equipment straps are black for ACW and by WW1 seem to be red leather. Ancients seem to be just plain brown. Was this due to tanning techniques or just fashion?

I imagine fashion – the same as you'd see with cloth. Both can be dyed virtually any color, but dyes aren't cheap (or at least they weren't – they've gotten progressively cheaper over the centuries). For leather, the tanning process used matters somewhat too (e.g. brain tanning will give you a different color than oak will give you a different color than alum), but after a long enough period of dirt and sweat and sun exposure and wear and blood and whatnot, that sort of averages out.

Doug

I'd suggest that the development of uniforms is also a factor: there's the matter of colour coordination to be considered; brown straps don't really work with blue/grey uniforms.