A pouch made of a ram’s scrotum

A pouch made of a ram’s scrotum

Monika Hint, an student of the University of Tartu Viljandi Culture Academy, runs her own studio, Koordikamber, in Koordi farm in Viljandi county. Collaborating with fellow artisans, local farmers, and hunters, she uses bone, horn, leather, wool, and other natural, often recycled materials to create products that build on and develop further traditional technologies. Koordikamber also offers courses and workshops. Tanning and tawing are traditional leather processing methods in Estonia. While tanning requires vegetables or flour, alum and salt are used in tawing. Until the beginning of the 20th century, these skills were widely practised domestically, though there also existed village tanners. During the 17–19th centuries leather pouches made of ram’s scrotums were used as money bags and tobacco pouches. They were tanned along with the skins and decorated with applique, beads, copper rings and fabric. Nowadays the pouch is suitable for coins, cellphone, pipe, dice, tobacco, talisman etc

934,647

11estonia,craftedobjects,estoniaobjects,viljandicountymap

2019

iain

Physical Object

91

Tubakakott

14/09/2024

24/02/2026

Hint, Monika. 2013. “Luu töötlemine lamba sääreluust vilepilli näitel.” Studia Vernacula 4: 58-72. https://doi.org/10.12697/sv.2013.4.58-72. Uus, Made 2019. “Traditional Leather Processing Using Domestic Methods in Estonia.” Studia Vernacula 11: 164–179. https://doi.org/10.12697/sv.2019.11.164-179.

18cm x 13cm x cm

current,58.321648,25.726901;

https://culturality.museum/11-2/

TEXT

122

Ram’s scrotum, woollen and cotton fabric, bone and metal accessories Tawing, sewing, cutting, smoothing, drilling

Cultural

Knives, awls, burscissors, needle, thread.

Collaborating with local farmers, hunters and other artisans, Monika Hint uses and often recycles bone, horn, leather, wool and other natural materials to create products that build on and develop further traditional methods and artefacts. The pouches made in Koordikamber are organic for the simple reason that nowadays only organic farms keep rams, i.e. uncastrated male sheep. The scrotums come from a small organic farm in southern Estonia.

Tawing, sewing, cutting, smoothing, drilling. It is the form of the scrotum, among other things, that fascinates the artisan Monika Hint. Seeking to make the most of this material, she combines skin with textiles for durability, functionality and looks, and with details made of bone, which is another favorite material of hers. She either taws scrotums with alum and salt, which produces results quickly, or tans them in acidified rye flour. In the latter case, scrotums are soaked for several days in fermented cereal mixture made of flour. In addition to rye, wheat, barley, and oats can be used to process leather. Flour tanning is one of the oldest tanning technologies in Estonia and is particularly suitable for sheep and ram skins.

During the 17–19th centuries leather pouches made of ram’s testicles, were used as money-bags and tobacco pouches. They were tanned along with the skins and decorated with applique, beads, copper rings and fabric. Nowadays the pouch is suitable for coins, cellphone, pipe, dice, tobacco, talisman etc.

Made for sale

The scrotums are delivered to Monika Hint maybe twice a year in batches of approximately 10. Because this raw material is so precious, and the traditional techniques used to process it tend to be time-consuming and labor-intensive, Monika Hint makes artefacts out of ram’s scrotum only a couple of times a year.

While these products are of high quality and exclusive, they come from an ethos of subsistence that for centuries used to define rural life in Estonia. Monika Hint aims to keep the production process as nature-friendly, local, simple and resource efficient as possible. This means using as few resources as possible, recycling as much possible and minimizing waste. In fact, much of what she works with is waste: byproducts and materials that others have no use for.

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