ABSTRACT:


	From the beginnings of humanity, leather and animal skins have been used by the vast majority of civilisations with a practical purpose, but also in the creation of objects that could be called “artistic”. Nevertheless, these materials have been present in Art in a secondary and tangential way. This thesis will focus its attention on this aspect, trying to furnish new prospects to the leather as an artistic support in the engraving and printing fields. For achieving that objective, the research has been divided into four main sections, apparently independent, which all together go forward to a progressive understanding of the plastic possibilities offered to the engraver by the object under consideration. The first of these sections turns on the general features of the support, its histology, composition and tanning, as well as the eventual problems and issues that could arise during its manipulation. The second one analyses several artistic manifestations having used leather as their main support. These will be split into two main groups: “Art on leather”, where the material is the holder of the work itself and “Art of leather”, where the material under study is not a mere receptacle any more but a constituent part of the plastic work. 
Concluded these two eminently theoretical sections, the research goes into the field of plastic experimentation, divided itself into two new sections. The first of them will classify the leathers according to their printing response to different engraving and printing methods and techniques (i.e. xylography, etching, dry point, embossing) analysing the results in an objective way in order to identify the best materials for the research. Finally, the very last section of the thesis is completely dedicated to the creation of a project for an original plastic work reflecting the conclusions obtained during the research and using the leathers not only as a support for the pieces, but as one of their creative elements. As a complement to the theoretical development of the work, all the printing samples using the different techniques have been included in an attached document. The statistical tables elaborated with the analysis of the results obtained during the cataloguing process have also been attached.