Human skin used for bookbinding

The proper term is "anthropodermic bibliopegy" (toss that out at a cocktail party). An excellent article at the Harvard Law Review discusses these interesting items:

While it's not clear how many extant books actually have been bound in human skin, many older libraries (such as the library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia which has four such books, including one with a visible tattoo) have such tomes in their collection, suggesting that anthropodermically bound books number somewhere in the hundreds. Many of these books were likely bound in the 18th or 19th centuries, though some may be centuries older, while a few may even be younger...

Of primary interest to law students, however, is an early 17th century treatise on Spanish law in the rare book collection of the Langdell Law Library, Practicarum quaestionum circa leges regias Hispaniae… A faint inscription on the last page of the book reads: "The bynding of this booke is all that remains of my deare friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the Fourth Day of August, 1632. King btesa did give me the book, it being one of poore Jonas chiefe possessions, together with ample of his skin to bynd it. Requiescat in pace." [...]

The first reliable examples of anthropodermic bindings come from the 17th century, but the practice really seems to have taken off during the French Revolution. The derma of victims of that bloodthirsty terror were sometimes used to bind books by its proponents; among other anthropodermically bound documents from that period are a copy of The Rights of Man and several copies of the French Constitution of 1793...

A frequent subject of such bindings were anatomy textbooks, which doctors and medical students may have had bound in the skin of cadavers they had dissected...

Among the most unusual examples of this phenomenon is the autoanthropodermic binding of The Highwayman: Narrative of the Life of James Allen alias George Walton…, the confessions of a highwayman bound in the author's own skin. The cover bears the inscription "HIC LIBER WALTONIS CUTE COMPACTUS EST" (This book by Walton bound in his own skin). Facing the gallows, Walton specified that a copy of his memoir be bound in his own skin and given to John A. Fenno, a man whom Walton had attempted to rob on the Massachusetts Turnpike. Fenno had impressed Walton by bravely resisting the robbery attempt, weathering a gunshot wound, and assisting in bringing Walton to justice. After Walton's execution, the book was delivered to Fenno and his ancestors eventually donated it to the Boston Athenaeum, where it remains today...

Other notable specimens include: a copy of the Koran at the Cleveland Public Library purportedly bound in the skin of a particularly devout believer who decreed the binding in his will, an autoanthropodermic binding of Jacques Delille's translation of Virgil's Georgics bound by skin surreptitiously stolen from his corpse while it lay in state, and ironic skin-bound copies of Cutaneous Diseases and The Dance of Death...

Much more at the Harvard Law Record (whence the photo), including a discussion re human skin used for lampshades (or not). Via Boing Boing.