A new fish skin binding acquisition for the piscatorial collection.
The Salmon of Wisdom from the Folklore Fish series. It is bound in salmon prepared by @sosnastudios with hazelnut-dyed salmon lacing. The book was one of 3 exhibited in the Beyond Bookbinding 2023 exhibit at @nbssboston in Boston where Sara, '23, is a student. Take a look at her Instagram and more fish skin bindings.
Join me as I jump into some of my addictive, all-consuming, and yet, sustaining rabbit holes in Down the Rabbit Hole: Embracing experience and serendipity in a life of research, binding practice, and publishing, part of the William Anthony Conservation Lecture Series.
The lecture will be at 6:00 CST on September 30, the workshop for students of the Center for the Book and staff of the Conservation and Collections Care Department on the "Ur"-Bradel binding will be on October 1st and 2nd.
View the recording on the University of Iowa Libraries' YouTube Channel below or via this link. Lecture slides with notes can be downloaded here.
Below the adverts for the event.
For more information on the lecture, see the William Anthony Conservation Lecture Series page at the University of Iowa Libraries, or the events calendar.
Hope to see some of you there.
Thank you to Gloria Conti, conservator working in Scotland who found this Italian newsreel from 1938 titled Le tante utilizzazioni della pelle del pesce. The film shows the processing of fish skins into various products. Gloria provided a translation of the brief narration below.
The many uses of fish leather
In Germany fish leather is very in vogue. After being tanned, worked, dried, and handled with meticulous patience, it can be used to make many things like we see here: shoes, handbags, gloves, belts, and even to bind books.
Thank you Gloria.
The imagery looks like the photos used to illustrate Franz Weisse's article "Fischhaut - Fischleder - Fischpergament" published in Das deutsche Buchbinderhandwerk, Vol 2, Nr 9, 1938. I described that article and shared some of the images in my post "Fish Skin - Tanned Fish Skin - Fish Parchment."
Perhaps the footage and images were taken together?
I was recently graced with a gift of two nice-sized steelhead trout skins by the fishmonger's wife. For a change they were a matched pair, i.e. they could have been both sides of the same fish, a nice bonus when thinking about binding designs.
Decided to tan these using green tea. I had seen wonderful examples by Janey Chang and Abigail Bainbridge in which much of the natural coloring had been preserved. It would have largely been lost had I used black tea, or made parchment.
Cleaning and other preparations the same as before, lots of changes of cold water with unscented/undyed dish detergent kept in the fridge. Next...
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| The skins in the first bath of 5 bags of tea. I used about 60 bags total of Tetley's Green Tea. It is important to start with a dilute tannin mixture to ensure the skin tans through to the center. |
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| The second bath had 10 bags of tea. This went on with changes every day and half in which the amount of bags increased each time. The last was about 25 bags for 2 days. I snipped into the skin during changes to make sure the center was getting tannins. |
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| "Making parchment from fish is nothing... This softening after tanning is brutal hard work. Working on oversized books was bad enough." As he felt them drying he added some olive oil to his hands to help lubricate the skins and finish them. |
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| Team-work and a good week's work. |
In the first step of the process, cleaning the fish, we decided to filter out the shinies (aka scales)... A few stubborn ones went through the tanning process and ended up yellowish. For kicks we threw them on the flatbed scanner (4800 dpi and downscaled for web).
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| A sampling... |
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| Untanned, note the growth rings, just like tree-rings said the dendrochronologist's daughter... |
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| This was one of the stubborn ones that wanted to be tanned... |
These skins will be used on Life-history and Habits of the Salmon, Sea-trout, Trout, and other Freshwater Fish (1910).
In 1983 the Guild of Book Workers organized a small set book exhibition of sixteen fine bindings on Cutcliffe's The Art of Trout Fishing on the Rapid Streams published as a fine press book with illustrations by D. R. Wakefield. That fine press edition is no longer available, but the original is (scroll down).
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| The catalog cover. Print copies can still be found. It is also online via the Guild of Book Workers' website. |
H. C. Cutcliffe. The Art of Trout Fishing on the Rapid Streams. Revised and illustrated by D. R. Wakefield. Tiverton, Devon: The Chevington Press, 1982. Printed in Perpetua type on handmade Barcham Green. 10½ x 7 7/8 x 3/8 inches. Limited to fifty copies, signed and numbered by the illustrator.
Binders who participated were:
The catalog is illustrated in the style of the day with smallish black and white photographs. Still, it is a wonderful record of the exhibit representing some of the most active binders then. Some are still active, some not so much, and some have passed. Included in the catalog are the binders' education, prior and past positions, and a description of the binding. Mine also included the price list for those works that were for sale.
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| The price list in 1983 dollars. |
So, ordered a first from 1883 to bind. Paper ok, needs a bath, smells less like a damp lakeside camp than the last book, but otherwise in good condition. Still, going to pull, wash, and deacidify. The book is also available in print and digitally via the Internet Archive.
When engaging in piscatorial bibliopegy, I prefer to use skins that I have preserved, but when Janey Chang shared these oak gall tanned brook trout on her Insta I couldn't help but ask whether she would part with them. When making parchment the color largely disappears, and other tanning methods overpower the delicate coloring of the fish. These are just perfect. Now to work on a design that honors the fish, and book.
So, who's up for an exhibit on this book?
So, I'll probably never "get over" piscatorial bindings, especially if they just scream using materials as metaphor. Here the latest candidate that arrived in yesterday's post from the shores of some loch in Scotland.
The binding and paper of my copy of Life-history and habits of the salmon, sea-trout, trout, and other Freshwater Fish (1910) show a life of love in a fisherman's cabin, intact (mostly), sewing very loose, cover wear, and just a hint of the general mustiness of wet sheep(dog), fog, and solitude. Almost 300 pages of clay coated paper.
Copies, including print-on-demand versions are available, and it is also available digitally via Internet Archive at 125mb. This is a fantastic text. richly illustrated with photographs and diagrams. Below a taste.
Hmmm, how to bind. Good thing I have several salmon and sea-trout parchments ready, or maybe I go fishing at Loch Wegman in the lowlands of Dewitt and tan the skin.
This catch is definitely a keeper. Now to clean, cut up into its parts, and take it from there... The front cover and spine will be integrated somehow...
For more inspiration, check out the 2020 Fish Skin Bind-O-Rama!
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| Skinning the fish. Note, the fillet is placed skin down and skinned that way, kind of like paring leather. |
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| The remaining bits of flesh and scales are removed in a process similar to de-hairing mammalian skins prior to making parchment or tanning. |
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| The skins are stretched unto boards with nails. |
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| After tanning, the skins are stretched out on boards to dry. |
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| The finished fish leathers in the hands of the Meister who is examining it for aesthetics and usefulness. "What binding is this most appropriate for...?" |
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| Into the dish detergent it goes. Remember, always cold water with unscented detergent. |
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| Soaking up the Easter Egg dye. Only reasons I used this was that it was in the house and free. Dyes are beet/radish based, and required added water and a bit of vinegar. No idea about long-term effect of either. |
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| The skin was soaked in the dye overnight and really seemed to soak it in. But, whoever scaled the fish, not the "fish monger's wife," did a hack job on the half nearest to the head. |
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| A mostly nice day, so I used the power of the sun to dry. Push pins go into coroplast, the kind used for yard signs like our solar panels. These are FREE, ubiquitous, and also great for practicing endbands. |
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| Woah! Where did the striping come from? Is this a rare tiger salmon (Behavior similar to tiger musky). Whatever it is, I like it. |
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| Here it is backlit. |
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| The "cause" of the striping, or at least a clue. The wet skin had stuck to the cheap paper I layed it on to dry. Interesting! |
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| Artic char |
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| Sea bass & lane snapper |
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| Lane snapper, sea bass, and Arctic char |
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| Mackerel, Arctic char, and haddock |
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| Haddock, sea bass, and lane snapper |
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| Here the top-edge Fritz Otto made. Acrylics in paste with some stippling for waves... The book is still in-process, and the colored flyleaf will be tipped to the next leaf just along the fore-edge as one of the last steps. |
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| The mackerel skin was backed with gray Morike paper and cut out to match the contours of the skin. The mackerel is a standing for the swordfish in the story. Scars/distressed areas on the skin represent the life and death struggle of fish and Santiago. |
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| The book was sewn on three thongs of shark leather, a metaphor for the sharks that ate Santiago's swordfish... |
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| This is a Dorfner-style open-joint binding. The parchment was not covered or trimmed back, so shows the contours of the fish. Doublure and flyleaf Cave Paper "layered indigo day." |
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| The boards were covered in Pergamena dyed goat parchment, title stamped in graphite foil. |
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| Here the completed binding. Shark thong ends capped by weathered wood representing Santiago's boat. |
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| Catch of the day. |
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| Filleting was the easy part. |
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| The Peachey lifting knife was great! |
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| Just fried in a little olive oil with pepper. Didn't need more for a tasty meal. |
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| Rülps! (How Germans Burp) That was delicious! |
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You Wenfeng, 68, an ethnic Hezhen woman,
poses with her fishskin clothes at her studio in Tongjiang
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| Ethnic Hezhen You Wenfeng's Chinese Han student learns how to make clothes from fish skin at You's studio in Tongjiang. |
