The Parchmenter

Parchment on a frame being scraped with a lunar knife. Photograph taken at William Cowley Parchment Works, Newport Pagnell, England.

The leaves, or pages, of European medieval manuscripts are made of vellum or parchment. The words vellum and parchment are used interchangeably. Parchment is made from the skins of sheep or cows, while vellum are skins of very young calves. When looking at manuscript leaves, it is nearly impossible to see the difference between parchment and vellum.

The person who turned animal skins into vellum is called a parchmenter, or papermaker. He soaked them in lime and water, then scrubbed them clean of hair. The skin was then attached to a wood frame with adjustable pegs and scraped clean with a crescent-shaped knife on a handle (lunellum) to make it smooth.

Before drying, it was dusted with plaster to absorb any remaining oils, then rubbed with a pumice stone to produce a surface that would absorb ink without allowing it to spread. The most expensive materials for making an illuminated manuscript were gold and vellum. A large choir book consisting of 300 pages would require about 150 skins, since the front (recto) and the back (verso) of each leaf was used.

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The Parchmenter | The Stationer or Bookseller I | The Apothecary | The Scribe | Scripts | The Artist/Illuminator | The Stationer or Bookseller II | Bibliography