Global pig skin supplier issues?

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Global pig skin supplier issues?

1hamletscamaro
Dic 13, 2020, 7:53 am

I'm backing another small publisher of medieval manuscripts who mentioned that there is now a pig skin supplier issue severly impacting his latest project. I'm wondering if this has impacted Easton Press since I know they use pig skin for a majority of their books.

Anyone else heard anything?

Here is an excerpt from his email:

"I just received word from the bindery that the world's supply of tan pigskin has dried up. Their supplier is going out of business (note that this is the second time this has happened during the Talhoffer project), and this time they can't find anyone else producing it. They have enough leather to make most of the Talhoffer books, but not enough for all of them. The final shipment from the dead supplier, which was supposed to be enough to finish the books, contained skins only about half the size of previous shipments.

They just emailed me after spending a week hunting through the leather world for a new supplier, and failing to even find any strong leads. Their question was, if we can't get the rough tan pigskin, which part was least important? The color, the texture, or the animal? They indicated that it was probably still possible to get enough rust-colored pigskin from the dead supplier to finish the books. Alternatively, we could experiment with other materials, or with clothing-grade pigskin (whatever that means).

I haven't made any decisions yet, and just asked for more information about the options. If you're waiting for a Talhoffer book, and have an opinion about this subject, let me know in a message or in a comment on this campaign. Otherwise, I think my heart says that a different color is the best choice, since these covers aren't simulations of the actual cover to begin with, but pigskin (in various colors) is the most appropriate material for a 15th century German book cover. Unless it looks too similar to the Fiore facsimile cover, in which case it's back to the drawing board."

2DavidAchorn
Dic 28, 2020, 6:31 pm

I read a thread a few months ago from an EP employee that stated they always use cowhide in their books, not pigskin. Could this be true? I'll try to find the link.

4DavidAchorn
Dic 28, 2020, 6:52 pm

>3 lilithcat: Thanks. That was it. I hope it is still true given the fact they are now printing some material overseas to be bound in the US. Could it really be that expensive to print AND bind books in the US? Seems like the overseas logistical steps would add some serious costs to the overall project.

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