Tannery is the workshop where raw hides are processed. It is usually a rather spacious room. Hides of buffaloes, oxen, cows, calves, horses, donkeys, mules, etc. are used in the leather-working trade. In their long processing the following materials are used: lime and ashes, dog and hen excrements, oak barks, "palamud"- chalice of an oak acorn, sumac, sea-salt and bran.

Until the Liberation from Ottoman domination four types of leather are produced in Gabrovo. And these are: sole-leather from buffalo and large ox hides; "kyusele"- semi-processed sole-leather for making sandals from smaller cow and horse hides; "sahtieni"-from goat hides and "meshini"-from sheep skins for vamps and linings of the shoes.

The processing of hides includes three main stages: steeping and cleaning of the hides; treatment with lime and tanning. All this is done with help of big and small wooden troughs, a copper, "postav"- a rectangular wooden chest, a vice, tubs, buckets, weighing devices, sieves, poles, trestles, etc. Behind the workshop there are 5-6 wooden or stone vats, built in the ground for lime solution.

Besides the already mentioned equipment and instruments, necessary for the processing of raw skins, in the museum's exposition you can see several types of iron tools for scratching and cleaning the skins on their reverse and upper side. There are and some marble slabs with tanner's clips that are used for stretching the leathers tight and a pole- "kavale"- on which skins are placed for mechanical processing.