Colourful Katahdin Sheep tanning | May 16-19, 2024
in-person | alchemical | hands-on course.
You receive a fresh Katahdin “hair sheep” sheep skin salvaged from Vancouver Island farms. The Katahdin sheep are from the centre and south of the African continent + have been raised in Vancouver Island for several years in response to climate change + persistent droughts. Almost part goat and part sheep (not genetically, but visually), their hides have long, soft strands and colourful coats.
The animals we work with are humanely raised on smiley farms for meat and their hides are typically discarded. We salvage the hides from local processors and bring them to our hide tanning students.
Learn to tan it yourself using a combination tanning method: combing smoke-tanning with mineral-tanning. All natural + found ingredients that create a safe and sustainable leather product.
Come prepared to work hard, sink into hide time, and be on the land + out of your usual rhythms. Then take home your transformed creation at the end: a tanned sheepskin rug.
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Dates: Friday, May 16 to Monday, May 19, 2025
Times: 12:30pm start Friday; 10am start Sat-Mon; closing between 3-4pm each day
Location: W̱SÁNEĆ Peninsula, North Saanich, BC
Three-day option to join for Sat-Sun-Mon only. Find this option in the "learn more" link below.
Scroll down for details. Click “learn more” to register.
Camping + accommodations available.
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Hide Camp Online Space
The Process
Combination tanning is the literal combining of two separate tanning methods to get the best of both worlds.
You’ll start with a sheepskin fresh from a soak of minerals (alum + salt) + scrape, soften, and dry it to prepare it for smoking.
Once smoked, you’ll add the finishing touches by hand-softening and buffing the leather ruf.
Your hand-tanned, quality sheep rug is the result of your four days of immersive hidework .
Campers: you can arrive as early as Thursday, May 15.
Day One: meet on the land at 12:30pm + choose your sheepskin. Wet-scrape the hide to remove layers of membrane, then frame your hide into a rack (pictured, left) + leave overnight.
Day Two: start softening. We spend the whole day softening our hides from wet —> dry. For those choosing the 3-day option, you join us today with a hide prepared for you to slip into class.
Day Three: we dry-scrape, pumice, and sand our hides to perfection. Combing + cleaning the wool starts today.
Day Four: we finish combing + cleaning the wool; spritz it to create lofty woollen curls - and you take home your sheepskin rug.
Your Teachers
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Mark Santamaria
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Mara Cur
Staying on the land
You are welcome to stay on the land during the hide tanning course (affectionately known as a “hide camp”).
We have camping spots available in a secluded, fenced meadow.
Spending down time with your new tanning cohort makes the weekend take on a whole different dimension. It’s a true retreating out of time and into an immersion of nature, community, and ancestral reverence.
To hone your hide tanning craft,
is to also hone your somatic relationship with the natural world.
Physical movement, hard work - the motions that humans have moved through for millennia - meet tactile, landbased skill in hide tanning.
You are invited to step in the complexity, the challenge, and the healing of hide tanning.