Book bound in human skin!

This very unusual volume, purchased by Lane Library from the London booksellers, Maggs Bros., in 1932, was bound in human skin for the private library of the physiologist and anthropologist, Hans Friedenthal (1870-1943).

The binding was sufficiently unusual that after its completion in 1911 the binder, Paul Kersten (1865-1943) described its production in the Zeitschrift f. Bücherfreunde, 1911, p. 264. According to C.D. O'Malley Kersten reported that he received the untanned skin from "the possessor" (probably Friedenthal). Kersten then took the skin, which measured 65 x 75 cm. to a tannery where it shrink one centimeter in the tanning process. O'Malley translated the remainder of Kersten's account as follows:

"The grain was noteworthy since to some extent it resembled a mixture of large-grained goatskin and pigskin; the portion representing the back had the course grain while the breast and belly areas were smaller grained. In thickness it corresponded to morocco leather, at the back 2mm., at the side 1mm. It had a very considerable toughness and was somewhat difficult to work to a smooth surface since the grain extended rather deeply into the skin, much as in pigskin; otherwise it felt like morocco leather, and were it not white it would be taken for such. . . . "

The front cover inset a magnificent plaque modeled and engraved in silver by the Weimar sculptor Prof. Elster, displaying the head of a negro and an example of a negroid skull. Above is the name of the sculptor and below the name of the owner, the whole represented as an ex-libris. The end-papers of the inner sides of the covers are made of moleskin and the fly-leaf of mole-grey silk." (Notes and Queries "Bound in Full Human Skin"J. Hist. Med. (October 1953) 447-48.)

Perhaps even more bizarre than the binding are the mole-skin endpapers which seem to have been made by gluing a series of moleskins with their luxurious black fur to the paste-down endpapers and framing these skins with silver inlays. As if this were not unusual enough, the book is enclosed in a black cloth clamshell box lined with yellow cloth woven in a Jacquard pattern showing the heart and lungs. On the outside of the box there is a kind of bizarre warning stamped in German on the upper cover. It may be translated, "Think when you are terrified by humans. . . . of your own human skin."

The binder, Paul Kersten, perhaps not unsurprisingly, produced several other bindings from human skin and published more than one article about them. These bindings and Kersten's publications on the topic are discussed in more detail by Lawrence S. Thompson in his article entitled "Tanned Human Skin" published in the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 1946 April; 34(2): 93-102

In addition to producing these exotic bindings and writing about them Kersten was the author of two textbooks on conventional bookbinding: L. Brade's Illustrieres Buchbinderbuch: Ein Lehr- und Hanbuch der gesamten Buchbinderei und aller in dieses Fach eingeschlagenden Techniken (Halle, 1921) and Der Exakte Bucheinband (Halle, 1923).

More than 'nuff said....