Sheepskin (material)

Sheepskin is the hide of a sheep, sometimes also called lambskin. Unlike common leather, sheepskin is tanned with the fleece intact, as in a pelt.

Sheepskin is used to produce sheepskin leather products and soft wool-lined clothing or coverings, including gloves, hats, slippers, footstools, automotive seat covers, baby and invalid rugs and pelts. Sheepskin numnahs, saddle pads, saddle seat covers, sheepskin horse boots, tack linings and girth tubes are also made and used in equestrianism.

The fleece of sheepskin has excellent insulating properties and it is also resistant to flame and static electricity. Wool is considered by the medical profession to be hypoallergenic. Sheepskin is a natural insulator, and draws perspiration away from the wearer and into the fibers. There, it traps between 30 and 36 percent of its own weight in moisture.

Testing at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the CSIRO Textile and Fibre Technology Leather Research Centre confirmed the advantages of medical sheepskin in the prevention and treatment of pressure ulcers.

Sheepskin coats, vests, and boots are common in the traditional dress of peoples throughout the Old World (wherever sheep are raised). They seem to be especially popular in the steppes of Eastern European and Northern Asia, and according to the French knight Robert de Clari, they were part of the national costume of the Cuman people who lived there circa 1200CE. In Ukraine a sheepskin coat is called a kozhukh and a vest a kozhushanka are an iconic part of the national costume. In Spain such a coat is called a zamarra, in Tibet a chuba, in Kazakh a ton, in Romania a ,. In the English-speaking world, one may speak of a shearling coat. During the 1970s in Britain the suedehead subculture adopted this item as an identifying fashion, and it also had some popularity with hippies in North America. Sheepskin-lined Ugg boots became popular worldwide in the late 1990s.

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