So my brother, Chad, arrived home for Christmas on Christmas Eve and walked into the garage to find my Mom and Dad standing watching me de-flesh a deer hide. While I was wielding a butcher knife and smiling in front of the hide that was hanging from a pole, he just kind of shrugged and said "It's always something." Last year at this time I was preparing for my trip to bird taxidermy school in nowhere, Wisconsin, and this year my Christmas break project is brain tanning a deer hide.
Ok ok I'm not just doing this for fun. Part of our graduate program is to do a "technology project." We're allowed to choose anything to make. Learning how things are made will help us understand how/why they deteriorate. If a painting is painted on wood, it will respond to environmental changes differently than if it's on metal. Ceramic vases and marble sculptures deteriorate differently than taxidermy mounts, and all are found in museums. Other people are doing/have done metal jewelry, baskets, parchment, book binding, stone carving, lathe turning, stained glass, etc. for their tech projects. I'm interested in organic objects (things made of plant and animal materials), a love that started with the taxidermy trophy mounts at my job at Biltmore Estate, and grew when working at the American Museum of Natural History. So, to prepare myself for a future of conserving leather objects (moccasins, buckskin outfits, water pails, biology study skin collections...), I wanted to make leather so it'll be less of a mystery. I mean, come on, it goes from hide to leather. How does that happen?!
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| From a deer... |
Another plus to figuring out how to tan- I get to connect with a process that humans have been doing for hundreds of years (heck, maybe even thousands of years, I should do my research before typing these things). There are many ways to tan leather, brain tanning being an old process that allows for a durable leather that is, get this, even washable after being smoked! I'm using a book written by Matt Richards that is "America's Best Selling Tanning Guide"... although I doubt there are too many other tanning guides to compete for this accolade, I'm very pleased with the instruction so far. The book is Deerskins into Buckskins and can be found on braintan.com, a site that also has some information on the history of buckskin. Buckskin is leather made of any type of hoofed animal, but it goes through a bucking process during tanning (we'll get to that). Go to the site! Do it!
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| ...To brain tanned leather (from braintan.com) |
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| View of Fulks Run, Va, where my mom grew up. Dad's home is farther into the mountains. |
(If you don't know much about Art Conservation or my previous experiences and you want to know more, let me know! I'll tell you more than you ever wanted to know.)
As a little boy, David used to go in his Uncle Jim's Taxidermy shop out in Golden, Colorado. He has great stories about it, and I've seen his work....it was great (he's no longer with us).
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