Lizard skin

Ugandan lyre
MFA# 17.2179

Description

Leather made from the skin of various lizards. Lizard skin may be tanned with vegetable or inorganic tannins. Its texture has many tiny scales usually with an interesting color variation. Lizard skin is primarily used for purses and shoes but has at times, been used for decoration of book covers (Roberts and Etherington 1982).

Synonyms and Related Terms

lizardskin; piel de lagarto (Esp.); peau de lézard (Fr.); hagedissenleer (Ned); pele de lagarto (Port.)

Fringe-toed lizard

Resources and Citations

• Matt Roberts, Don Etherington, Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books: a Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 1982

• Random House, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Grammercy Book, New York, 1997

• The American Heritage Dictionary or Encarta, via Microsoft Bookshelf 98, Microsoft Corp., 1998