Station: [63] Fish Leather Coat

The Nivkh live in Siberia, around the mouth of the Amur River and on Sakhalin Island. In a region where the average temperature only rises above 20 degrees Celsius on about 30 days of a year, even summer clothing covers the whole body.

The Nivkh fish leather coat is made from the tanned skin of the slender Grass carp, which is similar to the European trout. It took the skins of more than 30 fish to make a single coat. Since the fish grow slimmer towards the tail, small triangular pieces of leather were used to complete the coat. Nor were the fish long enough to provide enough skin to achieve the desired length. That’s why the coat is made up of more than two fish skins, laid end to end. The decoration also meant that more skins were needed, since the ornaments were applied to the finished coat. In all, more than 140 individual pieces of leather were sewn together. Fish skin thread was used for the seams, which were about 100 metres long in total.

Coats are not the only garments the Nivkh make out of fish skin. We also have gloves and boots on display in the showcase. They’re made of salmon leather, which have coarser scales. Large bags are another example of the use of fish skin. In all these instances, fish skin was used to achieve a water-repellent effect. Materials could be kept dry while being transported over long distances in bags like these.

A hundred or two hundred years ago, fish as a raw material was still abundant. In around 1850, travellers reported that in small tributaries, the fish practically propelled themselves towards the shore, with the water so shallow that they could be lifted out by hand. In the Amur River, the fishing nets were at risk of tearing, so that the boats had to head to shore again and again.

These days, fish stocks are endangered – in part due to international oil companies polluting the water.