Sable - History of Fur Use and Status

History of Fur Use and Status

Sable fur has been a highly valued item in the fur trade since the early Middle Ages, and is generally considered to have the most beautiful and richly tinted pelt among martens. Sable fur is unique because it retains its smoothness in every direction it is stroked. The fur of other animals feels rough stroked opposite the grain. A wealthy 17th century Russian diplomat once described the sable as "A beast full marvelous and prolific ... a beast that the Ancient Greeks and Romans called the Golden Fleece." Russian sables would typically be skinned over the mouth with no incision being made on the body. The feet would be retained, so as to keep as much fur as possible. Byzantine priests would wear sable for their rituals.

In England, sable fur was held with great estimation. Henry I was presented with a wreath of black sable by the Bishop of Lincoln, for no less than £100, a considerable sum at the time. Sable fur was a favourite of Henry VIII, who once received five sets of sable fur worth £400 from Emperor Charles V. Henry later decreed that sable fur was to be worn only by nobles exceeding the rank of viscount. The Russian conquest of Siberia was largely spurred by the availability of sables there. Ivan Grozny once demanded an annual tribute of 30,000 sable pelts from the newly conquered Kazan Tatars, though they never sent more than a thousand, as Russia at the time was unable to enforce the tribute due to wars with Sweden and Poland. The best skins were obtained in Irkutsk, Kamchatka, and Lapland.

According to the Secret History of the Mongols, when Genghis Khan married his first wife, Börte Ujin, his mother Hoelun received a coat of sable furs from the girl's parents. This was reportedly a very noble gift, serving not only an aesthetic need but also a practical one.

According to Atkinson's Travels in Asiatic Russia, Barguzin, on Lake Baikal, was famed for its sables. The fur of this population is a deep jet black with white tipped hair. Eighty to ninety dollars were sometimes demanded by hunters for a single skin. Sable fur would continue to be the most favoured fur in Russia, until the discovery of sea otters in the Kamchatka peninsula, whose fur was considered even more valuable. Sable furs were coveted by the nobility of the Russian Empire, with very few skins ever being found outside the country during that period. Some however would be privately obtained by Jewish traders and brought annually to the Leipzig fair. Sometimes, sable hunting was a job given to convicts exiled to Siberia.

Imperial Russian fur companies produced 25,000 skins annually, with nearly nine tenths of the produce being exported to France and Germany. The civic robes of the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London, which were worn on State occasions, were trimmed with sable. As with minks and martens, sables were commonly caught in steel traps. Intensified hunting in Russia in the 19th and early 20th century caused a severe enough decline in numbers that a five year ban on hunting was instituted in 1935, followed by a winter-limited licensed hunt. These restrictions together with the development of sable farms have allowed the species to recolonize much of its former range and attain healthy numbers.

The Soviet Union allowed Old Believer communities to continue their traditional way of life on the condition that they hand over all sable skins they produced. The dissolution of the Soviet Union led to an increase of hunting and poaching in the 1990s, in part because wild caught Russian furs are considered the most luxurious and demand the highest prices on the international market. Currently, the species has no special conservation status according to the IUCN, though the isolated Japanese subspecies M. zibellina brachyurus is listed as "data-deficient".

Because of its great expense, sable fur is typically integrated into various clothes fashions: to decorate collars, sleeves, hems and hats (see, for example the shtreimel). The so-called Kolinsky sable-hair brushes used for watercolor or oil painting are not manufactured from sable hair, but from that of the Siberian weasel.