Finely grained and delicately textured, the colour of the leather binding is a dirty fawn flecked with spots of darker pigment. The pages are edged with gold, as are the margins of the leather where it has been folded over into the inside of the cover. When I open the book, the first thing I see is an inscription, underlined and in a neat flowing hand: Bound in human skin....
Though quite rare, this rather...interesting...example of the bookbinder's art dates back to at least the 17th century, when one sometimes found anatomy texts bound with the skin of dissected cadavers, volumes created as a bequest and bound with the skin of the testator, and copies of judicial proceedings bound in the skin of the murderer convicted in those proceedings:
Only a few libraries admit to having such volumes on their shelves. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, for example, "has four such books, including one with a visible tattoo." London's Wellcome Library also has one. And at least four such volumes rest on the shelves of Harvard libraries: two at the medical school library, one at the rare book library and one at the law school library.
The volume in Harvard's Langdell Law Library is a 17th century treatise on Spanish Law, Practicarum quaestionum circa leges regias Hispaniae..., and it carries the following faint inscription on the last page of the book:
The bynding of this booke is all that remains of my deare friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the Fourth Day of August, 1632. King btesa did give me the book, it being one of poore Jonas chiefe possessions, together with ample of his skin to bynd it. Requiescat in pace. (The WaVumba were an African tribe from the area of present-day Zanzibar.)
A more detailed review of this somewhat macabre practice may be found here and here....
Recent Comments