Use
Fur and hides find their main use today as clothing, particularly coats. They are valued for their warmth, and as a status symbol. Rabbit fur is a popular material to make hats, coats and glove linings. Ermine fur was historically popular in ceremonial clothes of European monarchs. The black-tipped tails were arranged around the edges of robes, producing the familiar pattern of black diamonds on a white field. Because of this use, "ermine" became a term in heraldry, to mean a white field strewn with small bell-shaped designs called ermine-spots.
Hides have also been used to build canoes and tents, as simple window panes, and as material for writing. For example, many medieval books were written on vellum parchment. Many drums, especially hand drums like the pandeiro have their skin made from hides.
The fur trade led to the opening of the interior of the North American continent. In particular, the popularity of beaver hats in Europe in the 17th and 18th century led to displacement of native tribes, several inter-tribal wars and the eventual near-eradication of the beaver.
Read more about this topic: Hide (skin)
Famous quotes containing the word use:
“... it is use, and use alone, which leads one of us, tolerably trained to recognize any criterion of grace or any sense of the fitness of things, to tolerate ... the styles of dress to which we are more or less conforming every day of our lives. Fifty years hence they will seem to us as uncultivated as the nose-rings of the Hottentot seem today.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)