Many of the objects in this exhibition of leather items from the Hermitage collection have never before been shown in public.Some 80 items from the Department of Western European Decorative Arts and the Arsenal which are of greatest interest from an artistic and historical point of view have been selected to demonstrate the variety of ways in which the material was used and decorated in many countries (Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany) in different periods. The main groups of objects are medieval and Renaissance boxes and cases (fourteenth to sixteenth centuries), leather wall coverings (sixteenth to nineteenth centuries) and leather-upholstered furniture (seventeenth to eighteenth centuries).