FISH SKINS FASHIONABLE

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 September 1938, Page 9

FISH SKINS FASHIONABLE

NEW PLIANT MATERIAL The. sea—or rather, properly speaking, the creatures which populate the seas—halts for many decades furnished a valuable raw material used to good advantage in Germany, and which German industry has? learned to make use of in various ways. Ladies who purchase pocket books, belts, shoes and neatly-bound books because they look as if they were finished in leather, seldom, if ever, are aware of the fact that a largo percentage of these articles were make from the skins of fish. Leather made from fish-skins is not a product which was first known in 1933, but it has been used in the leather trade for over 20 years.

Hamburg has recently become the centre of fish leather-tanning on a large scale. After a number of experiments, production was commenced in a systematic way of leather made from the skins -of cod, salmon, yellow perch and other varieties of fish, which in every way equals in quality the leather made of sheep-skins or kid. Millions of pounds of these fish are captured by the German deep-sea fishing fleets, and whereas most were conserved for domestic use, the skins were thrown away. Nowadays, however, the fish are carefully skinned and the skins stretched on long wooden boards to dry. This is preliminary to the tanning process and colouring. They are then worked up in accordance with methods which experience has shown to be the most efficient, so that now fish leather can be produced which is pliant and does not tear, is not in the least brittle, and has till the good qualities of leather made from the skins of land animals. Furthermore, after much tedious experimenting, a most satisfactory process has been found for colouring this kind of fish leather. The mistake should not be made in placing fish leather in the category of artificial products.