Football Fever!
Wow - What a world cup!
Huge congratulations to our lads for getting to the Semi Finals.
Epic effort.
Did you know that footballs used to be made of leather?
And that our dear friend and founder of Tanner Bates, John, once made a traditional leather football?
It seemed like a fitting time to revisit this fascinating video from the Tanner Bates archive.
Click the image above to see the video of John making his traditional leather football
Football has been around for millennia in some form or another. Originally people used animal bladders or animal skin stuffed with things like hair, wool or feathers as a football. Then in medieval times, tough stitched leather stuffed with cork shavings was a popular choice for footballs.
With the invention of vulcanised rubber in 1836 by Charles Goodyear, and the subsequent inventions of durable inflatable bladders and air pumps in 1862. HJ Lindon created a football that used a rubber bladder to hold its shape bound in a heavy leather. These early leather footballs needed to be hand-laced after inflation and could absorb large amounts of water, making them dangerously heavy during wet weather.
However, it wasn't until the definitive codification of Association Football and the creation of The English Football Association in 1863, which kickstarted the mass production leather bound footballs.
Finally in 1935, British manufacturer Richard Webber introduced an innovative 18-panel lace less leather design, known as the Webber Premier, for precision and control.
Leather balls then finally gave way to synthetic materials gradually between the 1960s and 1980s.
Read our blog post about the Home Ground exhibition.
