I learned a great new phrase today.
Anthropodermic Bibliopegy is the term for...books bound in human skin.
This article from The Record of Harvard Law School details the historical use of human skin as bookbinding. It seems many medical and law texts were bound in executed criminal and cadaver's hides. And, even our very own Cleveland Public Library has a copy of the Koran bound in skin. (Can you say "Field Trip"?) But there was also a rage in having your skin bequeathed for the purpose.
The great Arts and Crafts designer Dard Hunter tells of being hired by a young widow to bind a volume of letters dedicated to her late husband in his skin. Hunter later learned that the widow remarried and wondered whether her second husband saw himself as Volume Two. Hunter quipped, "Let us hope that was strictly a limited edition."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment