SABLES
The Siberian sable marten is the source of expensive and sumptuous sable fur. They are found almost exclusively in Siberia. Other kinds of sables or martens include the American marten, Chinese sable, American sable, baum marten, Japanese marten and stone marten. Sables are members of the mustelid (or weasel) family.
Sables don't breed well in captivity although some are raised on farms and ranches but farm-raised sable is regarded as low quality. They are generally hunted or trapped. and their pelts often sell for more that $1000 a piece. The most valuable fabric in the Renaissance was Russian sable. Worth more than Persian silk, Indian calico, French-worked damask, it was sold mostly from warehouses in Arkhangelsk, northern Russia. Czar crowns were trimmed with sable.
Sable Fur
The Siberian sable marten is the source of expensive sable fur. An average skin of genuine Russian sable is worth several hundred dollars. A hat can cost over a thousand dollars. Coats cost several tens of thousands of dollars. Quality coat made from wild sable sells for $100,000 or more. The outer hair of the sable is used for the best quality artist brushes. Each hair is even tapered do the brush comes to a fine point when dipped in water or paint.
Patrick E. Tyler wrote in the New York Times: “The sable, resembling a cross between a cat and a weasel, is a cousin of both the weasel and the mink, but its fur surpasses all others in silky density and luminous hues of beige, brown, gold, silver and black. Basically a carnivore of northern climes, the sable feeds on pine nuts, mice and even squirrels and prefers to hunt at night. [Source: Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, December 27, 2000]
On sable from the Barguzin region of Siberia, Helen Yarmack, a former mathematics teacher who has become one of Russia's leading fur designers, told the New York Times: ''This sable has such a special energy and mystery in addition to being so light and warm and sexy that it is no wonder that a century ago there was a law that only the czar and his family could wear this sable.''
Sable Fur Production
Patrick E. Tyler wrote in the New York Times: “After a decade of chaos and collapse in the Russian fur industry, boom and bust in the retail market and fierce opposition from animal rights groups internationally, the one great constant about the fur trade has been Russia's monopoly on the most sought-after pelts in the world, the kind Mr. Karnilov was holding by the nape of the neck: those from the Barguzin region of Siberia. [Source: Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, December 27, 2000 ^]
“In the calamitous post-Soviet economy, Russian hunters have become the mainstay of world sable production, reversing the balance from Soviet times when sable farming produced a majority of pelts. Now hunters, who head out into the taiga each fall, outproduce Russia's crumbling fur ranches by more than four to one, Russian fur industry experts say. ^
“Hunting cooperatives have been cut adrift from state financing, and now hunters sell their pelts to public and private trading companies that collect the national fur harvest each year and transport it to St. Petersburg for auction. A professional hunter today gets almost nothing from the state, except the exclusive right to hunt on huge swaths of pristine wilderness. ^
“Just north of Moscow, the largest and most successful fur ranch in Russia, the Pushkinsky state farm, has just completed the slaughter of 15,000 sable by lethal injection, representing about half the 30,000 farm-grown sable slaughtered in Russia this year and sold at international auction to fashion houses in the United States, Europe and Japan. ''This animal is still considered a national asset and a national monopoly,'' said Pushkinsky's general director, Yevgeny N. Kazakov. But he and other Russian officials assert that European fur companies have conspired to break Russia's lock on the species by secretly buying as many as 100 animals from bankrupt former Soviet fur farms in the Baltic states. It's a plot reminiscent of the Soviet-era novel ''Gorky Park'' by Martin Cruz Smith. ''It isn't decent what they have tried to do,'' said Mr. Kazakov, referring to the European raiders, ''but as far as I know, it hasn't worked out because 100 or so animals'' is not sufficient to establish a sable population with genetic diversity. ^
Sable Hunters
Reporting from Arzoma Klyuch a few hundred kilometers from Lake Baikal in Russia, Patrick E. Tyler wrote in the New York Times , “Wearing a hat made from pelts of hunting dogs that had disappointed him, Valery T. Karnilov, a strapping former cattleman, had been stalking the foothills of the Sayan Mountains for only two weeks this winter when his huskies treed the first trophy of the season, a growling Barguzin sable with creamy golden fur and black tail. [Source: Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, December 27, 2000 ^]
“The sable monopoly has helped to sustain an extensive hunting culture in Russia. Today there are at least 10,000 licensed professional hunters, who in Soviet times worked in the same socialized collectives as farmers and factory workers. As many as 200,000 amateurs — and not a few poachers — have swelled the ranks. In the season, from October to mid-February, they will shoot or trap up to 250,000 sables, along with millions of squirrel, mink and a host of other fur-bearing species. ^
“And though Russia's hunters are suffering the economic dislocations that have befallen almost every post-Soviet institution, tens of thousands still respond to the call of the wild. ''For 20 years I worked as a bus driver, but as I sat there every day behind the wheel of that bus, all I did was dream about coming out here to the taiga,'' said Anatoly M. Kurkin, 42, who is spending his second season hunting with Mr. Karnilov, 37, on a boreal landscape of mountains and valleys near this bend in the river called Arzoma Klyuch, or spring. ^
''We come out here for our souls,'' said Aleksandr I. Shevchenko, the chief hunter who supervises Mr. Karnilov, Mr. Kurkin and four other men who lease the rights to hunt on a half-million acres of taiga. ''I used to live in the city and I had a chance to stay in Irkutsk,'' the provincial capital, ''and become a manager,'' he said, ''but I just rejected that life because my soul calls me back to the taiga.'' ^
“With unemployment as high as 50 percent in many Siberian villages, hunting can seem an attractive profession. And there is always the occasional well-paying foreigner to be guided into the taiga to hunt bear or reindeer. Mr.Shevchenko, 44, has led Norwegians and Germans into the Russian wilderness, where he cuts an unusual figure wearing a tank helmet lined with dog fur over a tunic and knee-high felt boots. He drives a homemade all-terrain vehicle that can reach the remote hunting camps he supervises. In 20 years of walking the taiga with a rifle, he has seen almost everything, he says, and though he kills animals for a living, he also shows a reverence for nature. ^
Sable Hunting
Patrick E. Tyler wrote in the New York Times, Under a canopy of cedars and fir trees in the middle of the Siberian taiga, Mr. Karnilov took careful aim with his small-caliber carbine. As the dogs bayed to keep the sable frozen in fear with dagger teeth bared against the human predator, the hunter felled the animal with a single shot to the head. The best marksmen aim for the eyes to avoid damaging the fur. ''I knew he was mine as soon as I saw him,'' Mr. Karnilov said as he showed off his prize to visitors who reached this one-hut camp in mid-November” on “the Oka River about 230 miles west of Lake Baikal. By that time he had already bagged a second sable. [Source: Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, December 27, 2000 ^]
“Here on the banks of the Oka River, the stars seem to hang lower in the rotunda of night sky that stands on a circumference of deep blue ridge lines. And the river runs through it all, a slash of jade green rippling between collars of ice that soon will shutter the stream until May. This is where it all begins for the most expensive wrap on the planet. When a woman bathes herself in a $100,000 sable coat from a salon in Milan, Paris or New York, she is not wearing ''ranch'' fur from sables raised in cages, because by far the most exquisite specimens of sable are still found only in the Russian wild. ^
“In the rose-colored morning light, the hunters moved stiffly against the chill, 20 degrees below zero. A layer of frost lay over the dogs, who curled back-to-belly for warmth. Mr. Karnilov quickly built a fire to heat the dogs' breakfast of squirrel meat and noodles, as the staccato code of a woodpecker echoed through the forest. When the snow becomes too deep for the dogs, the hunters set traps. At night, the hunters gather in a 12-by-12 log cabin, and while the dogs sleep outside so they will not be spoiled for the cold dawn, the woodsmen make tea spiced with pine needles and cedar moss, prepare barley stew on the wood-burning stove and tell stories of the sable tracks they have seen, of bears they have bested or fled from, of the wolf pack around the next bend — and how hard it is to find a good dog in this world.
“At the end of each season, the hunters take a census of sable, mink and other animals to help regulate the quota the Ministry of Agriculture will set for hunting licenses the next year.” ''The population of sable is estimated at 1.1 million animals and if we take 25 percent a year from nature, that leaves 75 percent as breeding stock in the wild,'' said Mr. Chipurnoi of the fur association. But hunters report that greater pressure from amateurs and poachers is reducing the sable population in these areas. ^
''In the 1980's, they were going to build a dam and a hydroelectric station right upstream from here, but thank God perestroika came along and they abandoned those plans,'' the hunter Shevchenko he said. ''Then they found diamonds just downstream from here and they were bringing a drilling rig upriver eight years ago, but the barge sank and they abandoned those plans too,'' he continued, then added, ''I think that God is protecting this river.'' With that he made the sign of the cross and sipped his tea.
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Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, U.S. government, Compton’s Encyclopedia, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Foreign Policy, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.
Last updated May 2016