Olga Smirnova berichtet über die Herstellung von Rentierleder

Tyrgish – suede leather, we make it by ourselves. My mother made suede leather from any hide. She soaked reindeer hide in warm, hot spring water. After the fur is taken off, she dries it, she spreads it into all directions, stretching it. First, she removes the remaining fat with a stone, which is called flint or chalcedony. Everyone uses one’s own technique: either to spread tea over it, if there is no reindeer dung, or the contents of the stomach, because of the acid from the grass. The outcome is white leather, but to make black leather they use chum salmon skins that they had collected earlier. Then they start a small fire, and they cook the skin. There is a kind of straw, like a reed, by the river, which they burn. The glue, which comes from the (fish-) skin, one must not touch it with one’s hands, otherwise it could stick, it’s fish glue. Then she takes the ashes and spreads it with the glue on the already cut leather. They dry it well, and the result is black leather that never dulls. To get red leather they used alder bark and a birch tree fungus. From that my mother sewed very beautiful things: boots and kukhlianki. They sew in winter, because there is much other work in summer.

Aufgezeichnet von Erich Kasten. Esso, 2003.