Leather industry figure George Donath passes away
George was born in a suburb of Budapest in 1930, where his father made machinery for tanneries and his mother’s family owned a large tannery. During the Second World War, they were amongst 40,000 Jewish Hungarian beneficiaries of the generosity of the El Salvador government, who provided them with visas and Salvadorian birth certificates. When Hungary was occupied in 1944, the family was able to use them to escape the death squads and take refuge in the Swiss Embassy.
In 1947, after the Russian liberation, they decided to move to England, aided again by their Salvadorian documents. George won a British Council Scholarship to St. Bees School in Cumberland. His uncle, Andrew Vigodny, had established the famous West Coast Chrome Tannery in Millom, Cumbria in 1938 and, after school, George studied Leather Science at Leeds University as the first student to receive a scholarship set up by the Millom Tannery.
Subsequently, he worked for Millom before becoming Manager of a tannery in Puerto Rico. He subsequently worked around the world and moved into the leather chemical area joining Stahl Chemicals. He subsequently returned to the UK and will be remembered for his long period as Managing Director of Stahl GB.
During this time, he gave the 1973 B.M.Das Memorial Lecture in India and, about a decade later, he left Stahl to become Managing Director of the trading business Kauffman Demuth. He retired to London and spoke at the memorial luncheon at Leathersellers Hall for Dr Robert Sykes in 2019.
At that time, he started the process of getting a book written on the history of the UK leather trade. He put a great deal of effort into turning this into a reality and the project has now been set up with a small steering committee, headed by Jonathan Muirhead, who have contracted a historian for the work. George led the many personal donations, now supported by industry and others, that have laid the foundation for its completion and was in discussions about the book in the weeks and days prior to his passing.
George Donath used his years to the full and leaves a wonderful legacy in circles far beyond the leather industry. He is survived by his wife Lidia and two daughters.
I first met George right at the start of the 1970s when I left University and joined Barrow Hepburn. His sharp, witty personality was clear. He was always approachable to talk to and willing to help, support and quietly give advice. I discovered that we both studied Leather at Leeds and lived in that very special place there, Lyddon Hall although he was there more than a decade before me. It was such a delight meeting him at Hall reunions. At Lyddon he befriended Don Rolando Duarte Fuentes from El Salvador and arranged for me to meet him when I was in Salvador working for ADOC. George and Lidia visited Salvador a few years ago to meet Don Rolando’s children.
What I did not know until more recently was that in Hungary during the War the family had been given documents from El Salvador in 1942. In 1944 George and his father were taken to be disposed of in the Danube when his father was able to produce these documents and persuade their young guards to deliver them instead to the Swiss Embassy where they would be safe. His father also promised the guards work after the war if they still had the factory – a promise he kept.In early 2020, he thanked El Salvador for their wartime kindness at a packed event in London where he detailed his family’s story and the immense difference the initiative had made to so many lives. George made it clear that we should forgive but never forget. The photo I have used here was taken at that event.
Throughout my career George was somehow present, and he arranged appointments for me in places like Argentina and Spain sometimes with work opportunities involved. Like most of those who knew him we stayed in touch and he was always engaged and interested in the industry. Anthony Collinson and I had a wonderful trip to Brazil with him in the mid 1989s to buy crust.
In October 2019 he called my mobile to ask me if I would consider writing the UK leather history book that he felt was now required. I was sitting having supper in the Addis Ababa Hilton. It was not for me, but it was a delight a few months later to cross London with Jonathan Muirhead, who was soon to become Master Leatherseller and have lunch at George’s home to discuss the book Jonathan now heads up the editorial group and I am pleased to be a member of his small group of helpers. Hopefully the book will form a small but significant part of the wonderful legacy leaves
John Sebastian Macaulay Booth – 1913-1994
The third generation of the Booth family to run the Booth business. I knew him as Chief Executive of the Booth Group in the late eighties. A wonderful man rich in tales of many things from the Reform Club to the history of the Booth Group around the world: from the building of the Port of Manaus (built in Liverpool and floated over the Atlantic) to the collecting of dog dung in Constantinople for shipment to Philadelphia for use in Surpass Leathers, the Booth tannery bought their to process Brazilian cabrettas. We use to look forward to going to his house in Southwell, which had an exceptionally fine view of the Minster, to listen to him talk of the past as well as the present.
John Booth (JSMB) photographed in his office at Trent Bridge
P Stanley Briggs
Stanley Briggs was my tutor at the University of Leeds. He had a profound experience in the leather industry through his family business and his experience in India. He was friendly with my father and the sort of tutor everyone needs at a University. Understood how to put keep things in perspective.
Sir Humphrey Davy 1778-1829
Discovered and analysed a wide range of alternate vegetable tannins to replace oak, identifying catechu. He also discovered potassium and sodium and invented the miner’s lamp.
From the Encyclopaedia Britannica:
“he was invited to lecture at the newly founded Royal Institution of Great Britain in London, where he moved in 1801, with the promise of help from the British-American scientist Sir Benjamin Thompson (Count von Rumford), the British naturalist Sir Joseph Banks, and the English chemist and physicist Henry Cavendish in furthering his researches; e.g., on voltaic cells, early forms of electric batteries. His carefully prepared and rehearsed lectures rapidly became important social functions and added greatly to the prestige of science and the institution. In 1802 he became professor of chemistry. His duties included a special study of tanning: he found catechu, the extract of a tropical plant, as effective as and cheaper than the usual oak extracts, and his published account was long used as a tanner’s guide.”
Walter Frankford (originally Frankfurther) 1905-1980
Born in Vienna 1905, died Cottingham, England 1980. His father Wilhelm Frankfurther was a leather merchant in Vienna and the family involvement in leather went much further back. Walter got a PhD in chemistry at the University of Vienna in the 1920s. He then went and studied in leather technology institutes in Germany – Darmstadt and Dresden before coming to England in the early 1930s. He worked in Nottingham at Charles Wade. I believe there was some connection with Booths even from that period. In 1950 he moved to Beverley and worked at Booth Research Laboratories, connected with Melrose Tannery. I know he used to travel in England and overseas in connection with the leather industry. He spent some time (around 1950) in Kenya (Thika) and also in the US with Surpass. Later in his career he moved from Melrose to a tannery in Hull. I remember that working on shell cordovan leather was a big thing with him (?during the 50s). He was an examiner for City and Guilds exams.
“He certainly had strong academic interests and I guess would have liked to have made this his career, but had to deal with the realities of the European situation. My grandparents arrived as refugees just before war. The business was subsequently expropriated by the Nazis”
(compiled with the help of his son , Bob Frankford)
Prof. Dr Hans Herfeld 1907-2002
In 1966 I won a scholarship to spend one week in Waalwijk in Holland and one each at Darmstadt and Reutlingen in Germany. In those days there were leather schools in all these locations but now only Reutlingen remains. It was at Reutlingen that I met Prof Herfeld and he was as fascinating as he was hospitable. There were three of us the trip, and he gave us an excellent time.
Jim Jackman
Jim was instrumental in persuading me to join the Booth Group, where he was Group Technical Director. He had played a key role in many of the Booth plants around the world – New Zealand Light Leathers, Nigeria, Kenya, N.Ireland etc. He kept the Booth alumni together with great skill.
Norman Lee 1926-2002
Norman was Managing Director of Hodgsons Chemicals when I first met him, at a time when they pushing Bavon D as a waterproofing material. Bavon was a development using long chain di-carboxylic acids worked out by Stanley Briggs my tutor at Leeds, and my final year project was a tiny part of the study.
Henry Richardson Procter – 1848-1927
First Professor of Leather at the Procter Department of the University of Leeds. Professor Procter worked as a chemist at Edward and James Richardson before going to the University. I worked briefly at E&J Richardson before it closed in the early 1970s.
Henry Basil Redwood 1903-1994
My father grew up in Newcastle and his first introduction to the leather industry came with the family friendship with the Richardson family who owned E&J Richardson. He trained as a chemist and specialized in finishing technology. This skill took him to Andrew Muirhead and Sons in Glasgow in the 1930’s where he remained until his full retirement in 1973.
Raymond Wilson 1944-2002
Ray had achieved a great deal in his life in the leather industry, but one still feels that there was an awful lot more to come. His unexpected death in 2002 has been a sad loss. I knew him at first in the family engineering business and I remember sitting with his team in the early eighties looking at what was happening to the leather industry on a global scale. In setting up World Leather Ray made the strategic move from the industrial economy to the knowledge economy, yet keeping the organisation close to the people, the products and the issues of manufacturing. Ray was always a great one to bounce ideas around with, either as a friend in difficult times, or in a more strategic business. It was Ray’s ideas to link this web site with leatherbiz.com and I had looked forward to many opportunities for business and social meetings.
Joseph Turney Wood – 1865-1924
Director of Turner Bros. of Nottingham, England. Discovered pancreatic alternate to replace dog dung in bating. I was Chairman of Turner Bros. in the late seventies. With interest in enzymes growing at the start of the 21st century he could be viewed as the founder of the modern biotechnological tanning concept.
Top technicians
Top European leather scientists named in 1937 by Shoe and Leather Reporter. Sir Humphrey Davy, A.Seymour Jones, A.Turnbull, Christian Heinzerling, Karl H.Gustavson.
world list produced in 2009 by Leather International Magazine Leather Scientists Pre 1940
Henry Richardson Procter
Douglas McCandlish
Louis Meunier
John Arthur Wilson
Mieth Maeser
Fred O’Flaherty
Edmund Stiasny
A Seymour Jones
David Woodroffe
Dorothy Jordan-Lloyd
Leather Scientists 1940-1970
Joanne Bowes
R Mitton
Robert L Sykes
Eckhart Heidemann
Willi Pauckner
Mary Dempsey
Robert Lollar
Humberto Giovambattista
Axel Landmann
K Gustavson
Leather Scientists 1970-2010
Heinz-Peter Germann
Anthony D Covington
Samir Das Gupta
T Ramasami
David Bailey
Karl-Heinz Munz
Eleanor M Brown
Catherine Money
Jaume Cot
Marc Folachier