Fish Skin Grips on British Swords?

[Philip]

Originally Posted by Ian

G'day Bryce, according to the Webster-Merriam Dictionary, the earliest known use of shagreen is 1677 in relation to rough, grainy, untanned horse hide. Subsequently applied to similar leather from other animals (onager, donkey, mule) and later to stingray, shark, etc. Probably from French, chagrin, leather from a horse's croup; from Turkish cagri, rump; and perhaps akin to Mongolian sa'ggru, to sit. Ian


https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shagreen

A colleague in Israel who works with a leather restorer advised that the typical leather covering on shamshir and kilij scabbards, with the pimpled "chicken-skin" texture, is indeed donkey skin. And the rump provides the best texture!

All of us are anxious to obtain this material for scabbard restoration work, but he looked into the matter and found that the only commercial source for it today is in ... Iran. So we Americans and Israelis are outa luck, rats!!