What Exactly Is Patent Leather—And Is It Actually Patented?

Before the creation of synthetic plastics, patent leather was made by glazing animal hides with layers of resin-based varnish. The coating protected items like boots and carriage parts from wear and tear—and looked luxurious while doing so. But who invented the process? And does that person actually hold a patent for it?

An Old-Timey Recipe for Patent Leather
Who Holds the Patent for Patent Leather?

An Old-Timey Recipe for Patent Leather

An 1857 issue of Scientific American explained the two-part process of making patent leather in olden times. First, manufacturers concocted an oil with which to prepare the hides for the varnish. It called for boiling five gallons of linseed oil with “four pounds and a few ounces” each of white lead and litharge, a form of lead oxide, until it reached the “consistence of a syrup.” The mixture was then blended with ochre or chalk and rubbed into the animal hide until the leather was sufficiently oiled to prevent the varnish from being absorbed into the material.

Next, workers applied five or six coats of the oil mix blended with ivory black, a powdered pigment then made from charred ivory elephant tusks. The result was leather dyed black and ready for the varnish application.

Finally, more of the same oil mix was combined with turpentine, copal varnish (made from tree resin), and another pigment for tinted color and applied to the leather, resulting in super-shiny and durable material.

Patent leather was commonly used to make aprons and and fittings for carriages and in shoes and boots, though the latter were not without problems. Scientific American blamed the incredible amount of lead used in the manufacturing process for the “prevalence of tender feet, corns, and bunions among those who are in the habit of wearing boots and shoes of this material … persons who so indulge look shiny about the feet at the expense of their health.”

Who Holds the Patent for Patent Leather?

This concept of coating animal hide with varnish goes back centuries. The earliest published mention of “patent leather” appeared in a collection of British excise statutes in 1797, but other publications of the time describe similar materials or processes. A 1793 issue of The Bee, or Literary Weekly Intelligencer cited a Birmingham man who invented a process for making leather waterproof, and if it became soiled, “require[d] only to be wiped with a spunge [sic] to restore it to its original lustre.” In 1799, an almanac credited the London-based leather-seller Edmund Prior for patenting a “method of painting and colouring all kinds of leather.”

The person most often associated with bringing these inventions to America is Seth Boyden. The New Jersey-based engineer developed a way to apply lacquer to leather based on the descriptions of the British processes in 1819, and then set up a factory in Newark to mass-produce patent leather. Boyden didn’t limit himself to such materials, though; he also invented malleable cast iron, built steam locomotives, joined the California Gold Rush but failed to find gold, and even developed hybrid strawberries that won awards at the 1876 Centennial Exposition.

Ironically, Boyden never patented any of these inventions, even his successful manufacture of patent leather. The only patent he ever held was one for a hat-forming machine unrelated to his leather-lacquering innovation.

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