Along the Ob river, Khanty women tanned sturgeon, sterlet and burbot into a soft translucent leather, then pieced it into coats with fish-glue joins and sinew thread. The skin keeps its own colour — silvery, pale tan, lit through rather than opaque — and whatever else it carries comes from smoke, oil and alder tannin, not from pigment.

This system takes the coat literally. Panels are irregular because a fish decides their width. Seams stay visible and do the drawing. Colour is withheld until the border, where one narrow stepped band of soot black and ochre closes the composition and then stops.