Persian Shagreen, Part II

In June 2013 I wrote a brief blog post about an unusual green binding at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The manuscript appeared to be covered in Persian shagreen, that is a raw hide similar to parchment, which has been textured with mustard seed to imitate shark or ray skin. In her essay on the global history of shagreen, Christine Guth states that,

'...it is likely that the term shagreen first came into use to refer to imported equine leather and was only later applied to its aquatic counterpart.' 

At the Chester Beatty, I have come across a further two manuscript bindings which seem to be made with a material fitting the description of Persian shagreen. 

The first of these examples is fully covered in a strange pale brown coloured material. CBL Ar 4213 is a 15th century copy of al-Hidayah, a 12th-century manual on Hanafi jurisprudence by Burhan al-Din al-Marghinani (1135-1197). It has the grainy textured surface characteristic of Persian Shagreen, and at the spine the rigidity of the untanned skin is visible where the two-piece covering has begun to separate. Today the binding does not look dissimilar to an aged, discoloured and keratinous parchment binding-that is apart from its irregular surface texture. 

The second manuscript, CBL Ar 4163, is a copy of Atar al-Bilad, a popular geography written in Arabic by the Persian scholar al-Qazwini (ca. 1203- 1283). The Chester Beatty copy dates to 1341 and its (considerably later) binding is covered in a smooth dark brown leather. It is lavishly ornamented with painted gold flourishes and floral designs, as well as a variety of onlays. In the framing border of both the upper and lower board, on-laid cartouches are painted with gold and red, but the central medallion, pendants and corner pieces are made of a pale, textured material.
The texture is different to that seen in the other examples of Persian Shagreen I have looked at. It is smoother, but flecked with dark spots like follicles. However, where the pale central onlays have been damaged, the white core of the untanned substrate is clearly apparent. As in the Fitzwilliam example, this seems to be a characteristic feature of Persian Shagreen.

The Persian shagreen elements of both bindings have the white core and brittleness characteristic of textured but untanned skin. However, the appearance of both of these surfaces is otherwise quite different, suggesting that different techniques were used in their manufacture, and sought from the finished product.

Perhaps these Chester Beatty manuscripts offer two examples of a wide variety of surface textures that could be achieved through careful processing and texturing of skins. It may also be possible that the different appearance relates directly to the production of this Persian Shagreen from horse hide, for a market which valued the textured surface, but did not intend to replicate shark skin.

Christine Guth, "Towards a Global History of Shagreen" in The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture of Connections in the Early Modern World, ed. by Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Aiello. London: Rutledge, 2015, pp. 62–80.

Herre de Vries, Book & Paper Conservator, RNA - restauratie nijhoff asser, will give a webinar on this subject as part of the the Icon Conservation: Together At Home series on Thursday 4th June 2020 at 4:00pm, BST.