Anthropodermic Bibliopegy: human-skin bookbinding (links)

I have learned some really weird stuff today. It's exactly what you think. And way more common in history than you think.

First I heard about a company that may or may not make high-end leather goods out of human leather, that "cater(s) to a small but highly discerning clientele". I don't know about you but I read that in Christian Bale's voice (a la American Psycho). If you have 500 Euros you can get a bracelet! http://www.humanleather.co.uk/

Evil Dead's Necronomicon Ex-Mortis.
Not human leather.

Not really taking the site seriously I decided to put myself on a few "crazy lady on the Internet lists" by seeing if and what human leather was/is used for. I learned about Anthropodermic Bibliopegy, or human-skin bookbinding. [Here's the wiki]. Some of these books look like regular leather bound books (see below) but some look almost like they're really carved from burled maple. This is apparently because if you simply quick-tan it and slap it on a book even deer leather suffers from poor workmanship.

This is kind of a crappy article, but does give a nice overview of famous examples of human-leather bound books.
Note: The author shows an image of a book of a Guy Fawkes Day priest skin hanged for conspiracy. The author calls is "a book bound with a human face". It is NOT bound with face-skin, it's Pareidolia, the human capacity to see human faces in things that are not. Show the book to someone today and they'd probably claim it was Jesus.
http://io9.com/5886724/anthropodermic-bibliopegy-or-the-truth-about-books-bound-in-human-skin

Here's a cooler page. http://thechirurgeonsapprentice.com/2012/01/31/books-of-human-flesh-the-history-behind-anthropodermic-bibliopegy/

I learned about a Marquis de Sade book bound with breast skin (Justine et Juliette); and one with a nipple visible on it (The Praise of Breasts of Women, by 18th Century French satirist Claude-François-Xavier Mercier). There exists no photo of the latter on the Internet that I can find.
http://www.crackajack.de/2012/02/22/anthropodermic-bibliopegy-with-nipples/

1852 edition of The Poetical Works of John Milton

There are also normal looking leather bound books that are human skin, like a book of John Milton's poems.
http://www.crackajack.de/2011/02/28/john-miltons-poems-bound-in-human-skin/

And a book that tells the crimes of a man who requested said book be bound in his skin and given to the man who brought his downfall.
http://io9.com/5881006/in-the-1800s-binding-a-book-your-own-dead-skin-made-a-lovely-gift

And lastly, some really creepy necropants. You might not want to click this one if you're scared of mummified scrotums.
http://www.crackajack.de/2010/10/27/icelands-necropants-made-from-human-skin/

I think the "binding of one's memoir with one's own skin" is a pretty cool idea, actually. Humans keep children's teeth, locks of lovers hair, some apparently keep vials of blood. I think a book about my life bound in leather that most couldn't tell isn't regular leather is interesting and way less creepy than a jar of my children's milkteeth.

Oh, you can tell the difference between human leather and other leathers apparently. Human leather has a different pore size and shape than pig or calf skin along with a bizarre waxy smell (first link).

If you want a gallery style view of human-leather bound books. Check out "Anthropodermic Bibliopegy" on Google Images. I love you Google. Nothing gross with the "Safe Search" on, but I always run it on. Maybe that's why I can't find the nipple book. If you find it, comment and link it!