There are, of course, several other leathers in which books have been bound as curiosities, and these are generally noted in some way; a book in the British Museum is lettered outside “Kangaroo,” and manuscript notes are in others telling us in what strange materials they are covered. Fish skin, known as shagreen, has sometimes been used for bindings; it is very strong but inelastic, and soon goes at the joints. In the seventeenth century it was largely imitated in calf, stamped with a grain.
Perhaps the most curious leather in which any book can be bound is human skin. Such treasures are by no means unknown. It is said that a friend of Camille Flammarion the French writer, possessed beautiful shoulders, and that when she died she bequeathed her skin to him as he had always admired it. He had the skin tanned and used some of it for a binding of one of his own books, “Ciel et Terre.” There are other examples in private ownership, but so far as public libraries are concerned the only instance I know of is now in the Carnavalet Library at Paris. It is a copy of the Constitution of 1793, and is bound in the skin of one of the revolutionaries who was killed at the time. The skin was tanned at Meudon. Human skin, undyed, looks like thick calf, and it is most difficult to get entirely rid of the hair.
It is to be regretted that of late years the desire for beautifully coloured leathers has induced the need for much treatment before the dyes, mostly aniline, could be properly applied. In the course of this treatment there has been an undue use of sulphuric acid, and the presence of this acid is fatal to the lasting qualities of any leather. Attention has, however, been drawn to the evil from authoritative sources, and now sound leathers can be obtained, and it is to be hoped that the public will second the endeavours of the committee appointed by the Society of Arts by always insisting on the use of sound and certified leather to bind their valuable books in.
SOCIETY OF ARTS.--Report of the Committee on Leather for Bookbinding. _London_, 1905.
LIBRARY ASSOCIATION.--Leather for Libraries. _London_, 1905.
CHAPTER VIII. THE ORNAMENTATION OF LEATHER BOOKBINDINGS WITHOUT GOLD.
Blind tooling and stamping--Panel stamps--Cut leather--Stained calf--Cut vellum--Transparent vellum.