Fish skin, a sustainable material used from ancient times to today's fashion
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7577/formakademisk.4183Keywords:
Preserve, Research, Education, Sustainability, Fish leatherAbstract
The use of fish skin is an ancient tradition in Arctic societies along rivers, streams and coasts all over the world. Fish skins were regarded as a useful material for parkas, boots, mittens and hats. Today the interest in making use of fish skin, an undeveloped by-product, is on the rise. By using different tanning techniques from cultures around the globe, fish skin has shown great promise as a material for clothing, as well as other products. There is also a desire to be able to tan these skins with environmentally friendly techniques. Today most animal skins are tanned using chromium and other cheap toxic substances, raising question around health and environmental safety. The knowledge of how to use these traditional tanning methods has been preserved by woman from cultures along the Arctic Circle stretching from the Nordic countries to Canada and Japan. In order to keep this knowledge alive for future generations, Sweden has re-introduced the possibility to receive a Master tanner´s title, increasing the incentive and status for those studying these important subjects. This is a report and narrative review of the field, and insights I have acquired over 3 decades; from student to Master Tanner.
References
Başaran, F. N., & Sarıkaya, H. (2015). Investigation of nutgall and some natural dyes with mordants cotten dyeing and fastness level in the context of the ecological textile production. IJASOS-International E-Journal of Advances in Social Sciences, 1(3), 452-459. https://doi.org/10.18769/ijasos.00057 https://doi.org/10.18769/ijasos.00057
Bertel, G. (1949). Från djurhud till modern lädervara: Del 2. Gothia.
Globala nyhetsbrevet. (n.d.). Så tillverkas läder. The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation. https://www.naturskyddsforeningen.se/lader
Palomino, E. (2020). SDG 14 Life Below Water: Introducing fish skin as a sustainable raw material for fashion. In I. B. Franco, T. Chatterji, E. Derbyshire, & J. Tracey (Eds.), Actioning the Global Goals for Local Impact (pp. 229–246). Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9927-6_15 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9927-6_15
Palomino, E., & Rahme, L. (2020). Indigenous arctic fish skin – A study of different traditional skin processing technology. Society of Leather Technologists and Chemists Journal from Northampton University, accepted for publication.
Rahme.L (2011). Tanning with traditional tools and techniques. Leather tanneries: the archaeological evidence, 39-48.
Rahme, L., & Hartman, D. (2021). Fish leather: Tanning and sewing with traditional methods. Lottas Garfveri. (Original work published 2012)
Rahme, L., & Hartman, D. (2014). Traditional tanning: Leather and furskin. Lottas Garfveri.
Ts’ai, L. S., & Wilson, E. O. (1929). Smoke tannage: The effect of wood smoke on the combining capacity of hide substance for chromic trioxide, vegetable tanning, and sodium hydroxide. Journal of the American Leather Chemists’ Association, 21–36.
Waterer, J. W. (1956). Leather: History of technology (Vol. 1–2). Clarendon Press.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Lotta Rahme
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
- The author(s) must manage their economic reproduction rights to any third party.
- The journal makes no financial or other compensation for submissions, unless a separate agreement regarding this matter has been made with the author(s).
- The journal is obliged to archive the manuscript (including metadata) in its originally published digital form for at least a suitable amount of time in which the manuscript can be accessed via a long-term archive for digital material, such as in the Norwegian universities’ institutional archives within the framework of the NORA partnership.
Readers of the journal can print out the published manuscripts under the same conditions as apply to the reproduction of physical copies.
Cited by
