Fish leatherBrief Background
"Why would you do this?" You might ask. Good question. I watched part of a parchment making class at an event and it reminded me that I work with animal skin frequently when I do shadow puppets, but the amount of work that goes into parchment is overkill for the purposes of making shadow puppets. All you really need is rawhide. I used regular rawhide for my first set of 13th century Egyptian style puppets. I bought it at Tandy. For smaller puppets calf rawhide is easier to cut and decorate. I even have some nice well made rawhide that I bought in China that is made for shadow puppets that is translucent, because the style of puppets they make are more colorful. The Egyptian style puppets may have been colorful in paned windows. The resources that I found have mentioned that the colored sections were made of dyed fish leather. So, I tried to find out what kind of fish would have been used in Egypt and so I googled 'fish in the Nile' but I was anxious to try making the leather and so I just decided to make some out of what fish skin I could get my hands on. My father-in-law is very supportive and grew up hunting and fishing and he helped me acquire some fish from the grocery store and showed me how to skin it. I did do some skinning, but he wanted me to have the largest usable piece, so he did most of it. But, I did the de-scaling. I watched a couple of YouTube videos about doing this, so not really an A&S project since I didn't document the proper Middle Ages process for making fish leather, but, I made some and it works and is useful. I do want to do more experiments on making it not so smelly, and then how to dye the leather. |
What did you do?
As I said we used a delicious piece of fish from Fred Meyer. We had to cut the fish skin away from the flesh before it was cooked. The filet we bought already had the bones taken away. So we (he) painstakingly cut the skin off in slow careful slices with a very sharp knife. I held the fish meat and pulled gently as he cut. He has skinned many an animal as a former park ranger and regular hunter.
After the skin was removed the scales had to be removed. I used the same knife and scraped the scales off the skin carefully. They sort of pop out of the skin like little window panes. I saved and cleaned some to use as sequins or something in a future project. They smell pretty fishy though so I’m not sure if I’ll ever actually do anything with them. The skin needs to be cleaned and dried in order to be used. I used a video from the Bush Tannery to complete the process, kind of. I didn’t follow the steps after the marinating in a mixture of vegetable oil, egg yolk and dish soap. I did let the skin dry overnight and then days later I soaked it in water and stretched it as you can see in the photos. I let it dry in the shade away from raccoons and crows. I was afraid that an animal would eat the skin, as it still smells like fish.
After it dried, I added it to the open panes on the woman puppet I made in 2012 and it looks great. I plan to do more fish leather experiments, with different types of fish and also coloring the skin.
As I said we used a delicious piece of fish from Fred Meyer. We had to cut the fish skin away from the flesh before it was cooked. The filet we bought already had the bones taken away. So we (he) painstakingly cut the skin off in slow careful slices with a very sharp knife. I held the fish meat and pulled gently as he cut. He has skinned many an animal as a former park ranger and regular hunter.
After the skin was removed the scales had to be removed. I used the same knife and scraped the scales off the skin carefully. They sort of pop out of the skin like little window panes. I saved and cleaned some to use as sequins or something in a future project. They smell pretty fishy though so I’m not sure if I’ll ever actually do anything with them. The skin needs to be cleaned and dried in order to be used. I used a video from the Bush Tannery to complete the process, kind of. I didn’t follow the steps after the marinating in a mixture of vegetable oil, egg yolk and dish soap. I did let the skin dry overnight and then days later I soaked it in water and stretched it as you can see in the photos. I let it dry in the shade away from raccoons and crows. I was afraid that an animal would eat the skin, as it still smells like fish.
After it dried, I added it to the open panes on the woman puppet I made in 2012 and it looks great. I plan to do more fish leather experiments, with different types of fish and also coloring the skin.
Fish Leather Application
Here is how I incorporated the fish leather into an actual item. This is my shadow puppet but now filled in.