The tannery museum is a reconstruction of the tannery workshop that was in the house until World War II and was owned by Tomaž Godec. The workshop, along with the exhibition of the tanning process prior to WWII was set up by the Technical museum of Slovenia. Today it is the only tannery museum in Slovenia, and shows, in an authentic environment, the way in which leather was treated and tanned.
First, they washed the fresh skins in the stream that runs behind the house, and then soaked them in a lime bath. After the hair fell off, they once again washed it with water, and then removed, with special tools, all the fat and meat. They then washed it again, squeezed out all the pigments and hair roots on the upper side, and if necessary made it thinner,. After soaking it in dog, pigeon and chicken excrement they started the tanning process itself. To do this they laid the skins into a special tanning bath that contained a mixture of tannin and water. They extracted the tannin from pine-tree bark, which they had ground using millstones run by a water wheel. They stirred the contents of the baths daily, adding more and more tannin in the process. After six to twenty months the tanning process was finished and they could drain the baths.
After this they greased and thoroughly kneaded the skins, then removed the extra grease using a blunt knife and polished it with a stone blade. After the skins were sufficiently dry they once again polished them with a stone blade to make them smooth and of an even thickness. During the last phase of tanning, called the breaking, the skin became soft and supple, and was finally ready for sale.