parchment

Parchment is a material for the pages of a book, codex or manuscript made from calf skin, sheep skin or goat skin. It is distinct from leather in that parchment is not tanned, but stretched, scraped, and dried under tension, creating a stiff white, yellowish or translucent animal skin. It is very reactive with changes in relative humidity, sometimes causing books to leap from library shelves from the changes in tension, and is not waterproof. Cooking parchment paper (see below) is used in baking.

History

According to the Roman historian Varro, Pliny's Natural History records (xiii.21), parchment was invented under the patronage of Eumenes of Pergamum, whether Eumenes I (ruled 263–241 BC) or Eumenes II (ruled 197–160), as a substitute for papyrus, which was temporarily not being exported from Alexandria, its only source.

Herodotus mentions writing on skins as common in his time, the 5th century BC; and in his Histories (v.58) he states that the Ionians of Asia Minor had been accustomed to give the name of "skins", diphtherai, to books; this word was adapted by Hellenized Jews to describe scrolls [1]. Parchment (pergaminus in Latin), however, is named after the city where it was perfected. Pergamon had a great library that rivaled the famous Library of Alexandria. As prices rose for papyrus, while the reed was overharvested towards local extinction in the two nomes of the Nile delta that produced it, Pergamon adapted by increasing use of parchment. Writing on prepared animal skins had a long history, however. Some Egyptian Fourth Dynasty texts were written on parchment. Though the Assyrians and the Babylonians impressed their cuneiform on clay tablets, they also wrote on parchment from the 6th century BC onward. Rabbinic culture equated a "book" with a parchment scroll. Early Islamic texts are also found on parchment.

One sort of parchment is vellum, a word that is used loosely to mean parchment, and especially to mean fine parchment, but more accurately refers to parchment made from calf skin. The words "vellum" and "veal" come from Latin vitulus, "calf", or its diminutive vitellus. In the Middle Ages calfskin and split sheepskin were the most common materials for making parchment in England and France, while goatskin was more common in Italy. Other skins such as those from large animals such as horse and smaller animals such as squirrel and rabbit were also used. Whether uterine vellum (vellum made from aborted calf fetuses) was ever really used during the medieval period is still a matter of great controversy.

The heyday of parchment use was during the medieval period, but there has been a growing revival of its use among contemporary artists since the late 20th century. Although parchment never stopped being used (primarily for governmental documents and diplomas) it had ceased to be a primary choice for artist’s supports by the end of 15th century Renaissance. This was partly due to its expense and partly due to its unusual working properties. Parchment is mostly made of collagen. When the water in paint media touches parchment’s surface, the collagen melts slightly forming a raise bed for the paint, a quality highly prized by some artists. Parchment is also extremely affected by its environment and changes in humidity which can cause buckling. Some contemporary artists also prize this quality noting that the parchment seems alive and like an active participant in making artwork. To support the needs of the revival of use by artists a revival in the art of making individual skins is also underway. Handmade skins are usually better prepared for artists and have fewer oily spots which can cause long-term cracking of paint than mass produced parchment. Mass-produced parchment is usually made for lamp shades, furniture, or other interior design purposes. ^[1]

Main article Gevil.

The way in which parchment was processed (from hide to parchment) has undergone a tremendous evolution based on time and location. Parchment and vellum are not the sole methods of preparing animal skins for writing. In the Babylonian Talmud (Bava Batra 14B) Moses writes the first Torah Scroll on the unsplit cow-hide called gevil.

Main article paper.

In the Middle Ages European parchment in turn was largely replaced by paper, a Chinese invention that was being manufactured in Moorish Andalusia in the 11th century.

Main article Palimpsest.

During the 7th through the 9th centuries, many earlier parchment manuscripts were scrubbed and scoured to be ready for rewriting. These "recycled" parchments are called palimpsests. Later, more thorough techniques of scouring the surface irretrievably lost the earlier text.

The radiocarbon dating techniques that are used on papyrus can be applied to parchment as well. They do not date the age of the writing but the preparation of the parchment itself.

Cooking parchment

Cooking parchment (also parchment paper, kitchen parchment, greaseproof paper and cooking paper) refers to a form of silicone-impregnated paper used as a substitute for parchment in cooking. The silicone renders it grease- and moisture-resistant as well as relatively heat-resistant. A common use is to eliminate the need to grease cookie sheets and the like allowing very rapid turn-around of batches of cookies in a commercial bakery. It can also be folded to make moisture-proof packages in which food items are cooked or steamed.

See also

• diploma
• palimpsest
• paper

External links

• Central European University, Materials and Techniques of Manuscript Production: Parchment: medieval technique
• Leaves of gold
• Meir Bar-Ilan, "Parchment"
• Lacus Curtius Website: Liber: Roman book production
• UNESCO: Parchment: production and conservation

Further reading

• Dougherty, Raymond P., 1928." Writing upon parchment and papyrus among the Babylonians and the Assyrians," in JAOS 48, pp 109–135.
• Ryder, Michael L., 1964. Parchment: its history, manufacture and composition.
• Reed, R. Ancient Skins, Parchments, and Leathers. Seminar Press, 1972. ISBN 0-12-903550-5

Notes

1. ^ For examples of contemporary artists using parchment see:
   • Contemporary Illumination
   • The St. John's Bible, *More Contemporary Illumination.
   For an example of a contemporary parchment maker see:
   • Parchmenter.