The University of the Unusual (4)

Anthropodermic Bibliopegy

Three books bound in human skin. Photo from Fugitive Leaves(the blog of the Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia)

  Those of you who bothered to read the fine print above will realize that the subject of this post is a touchy and somewhat sensitive one: books bound in human skin. A few years ago when some of them were found in the stacks at Harvard, I was going to discuss 'anthropodermic bibliopegy', as one of my unusual subjects, but never got around to it. Now that you know what this particular type of leather-bound book binding is called you can quickly learn all about it in the Wikipedia entry. There is also a very good resource devoted specifically to the subject. So I will simply provide the very basics and the essential sources. Then I will switch to a related subject which is even more unusual; it has to do with tattoos.
   Books bound in human skin do exist. There have been a large number of books discovered in libraries and private collections that contain the inscription, 'bound in human skin", but most of them were not. A new technique - Peptide Mass Fingerprinting - makes it easier and less expensive to determine whether the tome is bound in human, cow, goat or pig.
   There are many reasons why pages are held together in such a manner and you will learn all about them by examining the sources provided. Often they relate to the medical profession and one author notes that “Scratching the surface of the history of any real human-skin book usually reveals a doctor was the one wielding the knife.” The largest collection so far confirmed is found in the Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

Tattoo Preservation

   In some cases books were bound in the skin of a loved one, or at the request of the owner of the skin to be used. What if you wanted to leave behind, when you died, all of the fine art etched on your body. Could you do so? That is not an unreasonable question to be asked since we now see many more people wearing tattoos than reading books, and it was recently asked by a tattoo artist in Saskatoon. The short answer to it is "Yes".

   The heavily tattooed gentleman from Saskatchewan died recently and requested that his wife save the art. She agreed and the Cleveland company - Save My Ink Forever - did so. The process is a complicated one and your mortician may have reservations, but I will provide the information you need.

Sources:

For the books:

The book image is found in: "The Skin She Lived In: Anthropodermic Books in the Historical Medical Library," Beth Lander, Fugitive Leaves, Oct. 1, 2015.

For a thorough account see: "In the Flesh? Anthropodermic Bibliopegy Verification and Its Implications," Jacob Gordon, RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts and Cultural Heritage, Vol. 17, No.2, Fall, 2016. A copy is available here. 

The site dedicated to the subject is The Anthropodermic Book Project. 

The quote about doctors is from: "A Book By Its Cover: The Strange History of Books Bound in Human Skin," Megan Rosenbloom, Lapham's Quarterly, Oct. 19, 2016. Ms Rosenbloom is involved in the Book Project noted above.

For the tattoos:

"Dead Saskatoon Tattoo Artist's Skin Removed, Preserved to Honour His Work," The Canadian Press, Nov. 14, 2018.
"Kyle Sherwood, the company’s chief operating officer, went to Saskatoon to surgically excise Wenzel’s skin from 70 per cent of his entire body and preserve it with a special formula in a frame.
The entire job will cost about $80,000 and take about three months.
Cheryl Wenzel was in the room with Sherwood when he began removing the skin. I was able to point out which tattoos (Chris) wanted.”

"Saskatoon Widow Has Her Husband's Tattoos- And the Skin They're On- Preserved," Guy Quenneville, CBC News, Nov. 15, 2018. [The tattoo image above is Mr. Wenzel and it is from this article.]

For an update: "We're Back Together: Honouring His Dying Wishes, Wife Preserves Husband's Tattoos," Bryan Eneas, CBC News, April 15, 2019.

If you want to learn more about the process, it is described by the company: Save My Ink Forever. 

Postscript:

I indicated that it was the books at Harvard that I first read about. The subject was approached there with some humour. One article about it has the title "The Skinny on the Harvard Collection" and another has the words "caveat lector" in the web address: See: "The Science of Anthropodermic Binding."
While reading a recent book review about The Millionaire and the Bard (NYT May 22, 2015 I noticed this example of the use of the skin from calves:“There are many beautiful books in the world. The contemporary British collector Alfred Henry Huth, who possessed a First Folio that Folger coveted, also owned a ravishing “Book of Hours” illuminated in the late 15th century by the Flemish master Simon Marmion. Fashioned from the creamiest of vellum — parchment made from the skins of calves, in this case probably stillborn calves, whose skins were the smoothest and whitest of all — the luminous, one-of-a-kind Huth “Hours” looks like a possession fit for a prince of exquisite taste and limitless wealth.”

For other samples in this blog under the category of the university of the unusual see: The Guinea Worm and The Ingestion of Foreign Objects.