Adventures in Salmon Leather
Last month I was presenting at the Textile Society of America's Biennial Symposium, and I took a pre-symposium workshop. I did this because I was there alone, and walking into a symposium of over 400 people is daunting to me. I have discovered that starting in a working group or class ahead of a conference helps me make a few new friends to have lunch with or sit with on the bus, etc. It was also a really interesting workshop!
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| This is the hoped for outcome. |
Headed by artist Rebecca Graham, we had a cadre of artists teaching us - three First Nations artists form differing tribes and traditions, as well as a Scotsman, Peter Ananin, a natural tanner, who carries on the fish leather tradition in Scotland. Rebecca had obtained a great number of skins from a friend who is a commercial chef who saves the skins in the freezer after she has filleted the fish for her meals. She showed us how to scrape off the bits of meat and the scales using nothing more that a spoon. She discussed the methods of tanning, and June and Charlie Pardue from Alaska's Alutiiq and Gwich'in tribes respectively added their methods. Peter uses tree bark for his tannin,
Charlie uses willow, and we discussed other "found in nature" sources. For the purpose of teaching consistency, Rebecca used powdered tannins from Maiwa. Aworkshop that is just 6 hours cannot allow you to actually tan the skin, so we did the "cooking show" version of tanning - Rebecca showed the process, but had some pre-soaked skins rady for use to do the final processing on. The skins must soak in the tannins between 2 to 5 days, so this made a lot of sense. At the end of the day, we all took home two pieces of salmon leather (the third strongest in the world after shark and something else) that we had worked ourselves.
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| Peter's hot pan of tree bark tea. |
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| Rebecca's tannin choice. |
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| The skin, after removing the scales and bits of meat. |
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| The tanned skin - now leather. |
So now I am going to try it without the aid of teachers and guides. I must start by getting my tannin solution, so I am boiling up nearly two pounds of acorns in my old crock pot. I rinsed them once to remove residual dirt and they have been boiling and getting drained and reboiled .
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| Nice dark tannin solution ready to be poured off. |
The next step is to defrost the skin from last week's dinner that I asked my ever so patient husband to help me cut from the side of salmon that I bought. I will grab my notes and get back to you with photos in a week or so!
Addendum: Photos of Peter's pants from a hide of a roe deer that he tanned, and stitched, and even made the buttons for. And yes, I got his permission before shooting a photo of the fly of the trousers!
