1786 RUSSIAN HIDE

In 1973, divers off England’s Plymouth Sound found the wreck of an eighteenth century brigantine that sank in 1786 with a cargo of reindeer hides. They had been cured in baths of rye or oat flour and yeast, hand embossed with a varied cross-hatching before being soaked in wood liquor, hand curried and then soaked in seal oil and birch tan oil. This leather is literally a piece of history, and once it is gone, it is gone forever.