How To Make Parchment From Animal Skins

5. Book Illumination

II. Materials and Techniques of Manuscript Production ^Credits

1. Parchment
Parchment is made from the skin of an animal. The procedure of transforming the animal peel into a clean white material suitable for writing medieval manuscripts was the task of the percamenarius, the parchment-maker or parchmenter. In the tardily Centre Ages parchment-makers took their place among the artisans and tradesmen of every town.

In normal usage, the terms parchment and vellurri are interchangeable. The word parchment, unremarkably pergamenum in medieval Latin, derives from the proper noun of the city of Pergamum whose ancient Male monarch Eumenes is said by Pliny to have invented it in the second century BC during a merchandise blockade on papyrus. The word vellum has the same origin equally veal or veau in French, in other words, calf, vitellus in Latin, and is strictly the writing material made from cow pare. Merely except with magnification and a good knowledge of dermatology it is practically incommunicable to tell the prepared skin of one fauna from another.

The training of parchment is a slow and complicated procedure. Early craftsmen's manuals emphasise that the selection of practiced skins is crucial. Medieval farm animals probably suffered from diseases and ticks, and these can exit unacceptable flaws on the skin of the flayed animal. A parchmenter, looking over available skins in the abattoir, would probably also have to consider the colour of the wool or hair equally this will be reflected on the final surface of the parchment: white sheep or cows will tend to produce white parchment, and the shadowy brown patterns which are i of the aesthetically pleasing features of parchment may often be echoes of brindled cows or piebald goats. Get-go of all the parchmenter has to wash a peel in cold clear running water for a solar day and a night according to i recipe or simply 'till it is make clean enough', according to another. Equally the peel begins to rot, the hair naturally falls out. In hot countries the damp skins may take been laid out in the sun to allow this to take identify. Normally, however, the procedure of loosening the hair in parchmentmaking is artificially induced by soaking the skins in wooden or stone vats in a solution of lime and water for betwixt near iii to 10 days, stirring the vats several times a solar day with a wooden pole. Ane past one, the wet slippery skins are taken out and draped hair side out over a great curved upright shield of wood. The parchment-maker scrapes away the hair with a long curved knife with a wooden handle at each end. The bare pare is revealed underneath, looking pink where the beast'south pilus was white and paler where it was brown. Where possible the outer motion-picture show is scraped away too. This surface where the pilus has been is known as the grain side of the parchment. The de-haired and tidied-upward pelt is then again rinsed for two further days in fresh water to articulate it of the lime.

In the second stage of the procedure the skin is really made into parchment. Information technology centres effectually the drying of the skin while it is stretched on a frame. The pelt, floppy and moisture from its last rinse, is suspended spread-eagled in a wooden frame.

This frame can be hoop-shaped or more-or-less rectangular. The skin cannot be nailed to the frame considering information technology shrinks during the drying procedure and the edges would tear away (and in any example the frames are used over and over again and would become unserviceable if riddled with boom holes) and so instead the parchmenter suspends the skin past strings attached to adjustable pegs in the frame. Every few centimetres around the edge of the skin the parchment-maker pushes little pebbles or polish stones into the soft border, folding them in to form knobs which are then looped effectually and secured with cord. The other end of the cord is so anchored into the slot of a revolving peg in the frame. One by one these knobs and strings are lashed around the edge until the whole pare resembles a vertical trampoline, and the pegs are turned to pull the skin. Every bit it stretches, any tiny gashes or cuts accidentally made in the flaying or de-hairing will be pulled out into round or oval holes.

It is not uncommon to come across such holes in pages or margins of medieval manuscripts. If the parchmenter notices cuts in time they can be stitched up with thread to stop their expansion into holes; sometimes in pages of manuscripts one sees holes with stitch marks around their edges, evidently indicating that cuts were mended but nevertheless divide their sewing and opened up once more under pressure.

The skin is now tight and rubbery but still wet. The parchment-maker keeps information technology moisture initially by ladling on scoops of hot water. He and so begins scraping vigorously at the skin using a curved pocketknife with a central handle. An ordinary knife would have a precipitous corner and then could also hands cut the tight surface. The crescent-shaped knife was chosen a lunellum and occurs in medieval pictures of parchment-makers equally their nearly recognisable tool, and is used to give both surfaces a really thorough scraping, especially the flesh side of the skin.

As the work progresses the parchmenter is constantly tightening the pegs and tapping them with a hammer to keep them stock-still. And so the peel is allowed to dry on the frame and it shrinks and becomes tighter still as it does and then. When it is all dry, the scraping and shaving begins again. The peel is at present as tight as a new drum and the noise in the workshop of the metallic knife on the surface is considerable. In the early monastic period of manuscript production parchment was ofttimes quite thick, just by the thirteenth century it was existence planed away to an almost tissue thinness. The grain side where the hair had one time been has to be scraped away especially at this final phase to remove the glassy shine unsatisfactory as a writing surface. At present the pegs tin can be undone. The dry sparse opaque parchment is released and tin can be rolled upwardly and stored or taken to exist sold. Probably when medieval scribes or booksellers bought vellum from a parchmenter it was similar this, not yet buffed up and rubbed with chalk in training for the actual writing. Prices of parchment of course varied profoundly, only sheets were mostly sold by the dozen.

Parchment is extraordinarily durable, far more so than leather, for instance. It can last for a thousand years, or more than, in perfect condition. Good parchment is soft and thin and velvety, and folds hands. The grain side of the sheet, where the hair in one case was, is usually darker in colour, creamy or yellower (especially with sheep parchment) or chocolate-brown grey with goat parchment.