I have to give Richard Davies, Abebooks.com's PR guy, a lot of credit for coming up with interesting ideas for press releases. With the growing anticipation for the upcoming Samuel Jackson movie, Snakes on a Plane, Richard issued a press release and set up a page on Abebooks about snakeskin bindings. The image to the left is a book from the libary of Clarence Darrow that incorporates a snake in the binding. Price, $1,075.
Snakeskin can also be used to beautiful effect. Richard Minsky, a bookbinder we profiled in March/April 2005 [story online], has done a beautiful binding making the most of the iridescence of the material.
The most notorious binding material is human skin, which has been used to on a number of books [see this Boston Globe article. Maud Newton has a picture of one on her blog; Tech Ramblings recently mentioned it, too]. While the best-known examples of human skin bindings are in libraries, copies circulate, often quietly, in the book trade. Marc Selvaggio of Schoyer's Books acquired two such books recently as part of the collection of Fred Board (see our March/April issue for more on the late Mr. Board). As you might imagine, Marc was eager to get them out of his hands as quickly as possible, so he sent them off to auction at New England Book Auctions.
You might be surprised to learn that the ick factor tends to overwhelm rarity and keeps prices down. Here are the Board books:
The Dance of Death; Painted by H. Holbein and Engraved by W. Hollar. 30 fine copperplate engravings, each with facing page of text. Full black morocco manufactured from human skin, inner dentelles, top-edge gilt, housed in a protective cloth case provided; rubbed, some foxing. $1,320
He Kaine Diatheke. The Greek Testament with the Readings Adopted by the Revisers. Oxford, 1881. Bound in full brown leather made from human skin; rubbed, text block loose in casing, some marginal fraying, stains, etc. $2,970.
As is often the case in collecting, good provenance attracts bidders. I suspect that this note on the front endpaper pushed up the price for He Kaine Diatheke:
"This book is bound in human skin. The young woman from whose body the skin was taken, was 20 years of age. She died in Boston Dec. 25th 1881. Her body was taken to the school of Medicine of Boston University, where it excited much interest on account of her beauty. The student, who preserved some of the skin, ...traced out the history of the young woman. She found that at the age of 16 she had married to a drunken man, who abused her and made her do cheap sewing. After 4 years of such a life she was taken sick, and brought [in?] where she died Dec. 25 th, 1881."
It turns out that 2006 has been a big year for human skin ("anthropodermic") bindings. Christie's sold another one on June 30, referring to the material as "peau humaine." Everything sounds better in French, doesn't it? The book was Souvenirs d'une Cocodette, ecrits par ellememe. Leipzig: Landmann, 1878. The binding was executed in 1883 for Alexandre Coccoz by Francisque Cuzin for Georges Mercier fils, according to an enclosed note. Sold for $6,000. I couldn't find any other auction records for human skin bindings in the last 30 years.
I wondered if any human skin bindings were listed on Abebooks and sure enough, one turned up in a collection that is a veritable menagerie of unusual binding materials offered by Ursus Books in New York for $25,000 [sold].
The full list is after the jump.
ANIMAL SKIN BINDINGS. An Eccentric, Unique Collection of Bindings. A total of 19 volumes various sizes, publishers, and dates. A unique bookbinding collection of exceptional originality: each volume has been bound in a material suggested by the text of the book itself. Included are bindings made of Kangaroo skin, cloth from a French Foreign Legion uniform, seal skin, zebra hide, brown cordovan horse skin, Python skin, lion fur, Water Buffalo hide, Ostrich skin, lizard skin, sharkskin, goatskin, sheep vellum, cloth from a WWI German Feldwebel uniform, alligator skin, human skin (?), boa snakeskin and more. Unfortunately, the Abebooks's entry is cut off before the human skin binding is described.
[KANGAROO]. R. Lydekker. Marsupials. London: John Shaw, (ca. 1920's). Bound in full polished Kangaroo skin with gilt tooling on covers and spine. Hinges chafed.
[FRENCH FOREIGN LEGION]. Alice S. Weeks. Greater Love Hath No Man. Boston: Humphries, 1939. Bound in full blue uniform from the French Foreign Legion, with brass buttons on spine, ribbons and cords with brass fourragères.
[SEAL]. Henry W. Elliott. The Seal Islands of Alaska. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1881. Bound in full black seal skin with title and silver tooling on the cover, with special decorated silk endleaves. Rebacked with original spine laid down.
[ZEBRA]. Prince William of Sweden. Wild African Animals I Have Known. London: John Lane, 1923. Bound in full untanned zebra hide, with the furry mane along the spine.
[HORSE]. Arthur Vernon. The History and Romance of the Horse. New York: Halcyon House, 1941. Bound in full smooth dark brown cordovan. Hinges repaired.
[PYTHON]. Raymond L. Ditmars. Reptiles of the World. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1933. Bound in full scaly Python skin, embroidered Chinese dragon endpapers.
[LION]. Martin Johnson. Lion. Africa Adventure with The King of Beasts. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1929. Bound in full light brown untanned lion fur, with handpainted grasscloth endpapers depicting a lion in primitive relief chasing African natives.
[WATER BUFFALO]. H.P. Garland. The Water Buffalo. Saco, Maine: Garland, 1922. Bound in full black Water Buffalo hide, gilt-lettered spine, special Indian paisley endpapers. Hinges chafed.
[OSTRICH]. Julius de Mosenthal. Ostriches and Ostrich Farming. London: Trübner & Co., 1879. Bound in full Ostrich skin with a blue and gilt Ostrich vignette tipped onto front cover, with special red and black Ostrich patterned endpapers.
[LIZARD]. W. Douglas Burden. Dragon Lizards of Komodo. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1927. Bound in full white and grey lizard skin, with batik lizard scale-like patterned endpapers in silk.
[SHARK]. Captain William E. Young. Shark! Shark! The Thirty-Year Odyssey of a Pioneer Shark Hunter. New York: Gotham House, 1934. Bound in full rough-grained brown sharkskin, with shark map endpapers. Light chafing to the extremities.
[BABY SEAL]. David Moore Lindsay. A Voyage to the Arctic in the Whaler Aurora. Boston: Dana Estes & C., 1911. Bound in full black sealskin, with white sealskin tipped on as letters for the spine and baby seal fur on seal vignette on front cover, iceberg endpapers.
[GOAT]. Irmagarde Richards. Modern Milk Goats. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1921. Bound in full polished red morocco, gilt-tooled borders and spine, black silk endpapers with goat designs.
[SHEEP]. L.A. Morrell. The American Shepherd, Being a History of the Sheep. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1845. Bound in full sheep vellum over boards, red leather title-labels on spine, red cloth sheep-illustrated endpapers.
[GERMAN WWI UNIFORM]. Erich Maria Remarque. All Quiet on the Western Front. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1929. Bound in full Germany grey rough cloth fatigue of WWI German Feldwebel, with brass buttons on spine.
[ALLIGATOR]. Albert M. Reese. The Alligator and its Allies. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1915. Bound in full brown alligator skin, gilt-lettered spine.
[Reproduced from Abebooks.com]
That is so interesting that they would make a book cover from human skin. It's a little morbid and rather shocking that people would want to purchase it, but still very interesting
Posted by: Pet Urns | May 10, 2008 at 05:16 PM