Woven Skin
Woven Skin
By Matthew Bala
The vegetable tan makes for a nice patina—the only problem is that extra month it takes to get a real film. Full-grain leather has its beat on time and tincture, and the more exposed full-grain garners this carob shade that the eco-friendly stuff never reaches.
The white fluorescents of my granddad’s atelier command no dyed pieces or light pigments so that the texture and looks are best preserved. Ear muffs clasp about my cauliflower ears, and polyethylene sleeves brace my arms from rotary cuts and snagging material. Airflow in here has been cut for a good while since this bulk order—the HVAC shut-out during overtime may slick my lungs grease-black and oil-green.
Bookbinder-I goes on with the ruled markings as the leather tracks into the board to clamp into place. The skiving knife is there to tell of the thickness, of the sluggard jumps and the smooth glides of shorn, soon-to-be-tooling-wrap bow away from the sheet—and here I call myself some artisan to pad, feeling and stroking for layers even and matched. The tanners haven’t rushed the process, and after dehairing it could still all tear, but they did a mighty fine job so that my work may go un-ridged and un-bumped.
Sweat builds my brow anew, and the swipes of grisled hands let shavings and debris fly onto my flat canvas. Hunger pains swell from my stomach into my throat and there to taper and burnish the skin lies. The piece stuck in the clamp—the bevel—stretches to hit a half-right mark and pumps slow along where my dragging swoop of material ebbs and shrinks into the air; I lift and rotate to the other sides as I cannot chair myself, and with the pressured technique of years gone by the piece is near ready for dyeing.
The thin wrap sits stretched and again I graze the gravel-smooth flesh with the outs of my fingers and I know that as with everything that leaves this place, the beholder can never know the real beauty.
Within only this month, there are to be hundreds of journals—to understand that the signatures and threads and bands can fall into hands other than my own hardly satisfies me. I disrobe the arm-guards, knock off the earmuffs back onto the table, and stamp over to the switches to cut off the lights. Another cough forces out some percussive wheezes and thoughts of liquidating the company come back to mind. There to the fire escape I reach and look down on Las Cruces, which has nurtured me for so long—a life of bookbinding is one my heritage has claimed for me, and with all my joys and sorrows I cherish it for turning me novice into master of a practice so ancient.
All the peace I could ever want—a never-ending release that could temper my mind into flat skin and my tongue stiff with the oils and dyes of passing creations. Let me die, let me turn a martyr for a lineage of work unbroken and untampered. Allow the throes of disease and death to take me, all so that the abilities of my son can develop this company fresh with the new generation. To sacrifice not for myself, but for the work of centuries that no lifetime of mine could ever match; let the fruit die, so even more can come of the future.
