Parchment
Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats.
The word is derived from the Koinē Greek city name, Pergamum (or Pergamon, modern Bergama) in western Anatolia, where parchment was supposedly first developed around the second century BCE, probably as a substitute for papyrus.
[1] Today the term parchment is often used in non-technical contexts to refer to any animal skin, particularly goat, sheep or cow, that has been scraped or dried under tension.
Some authorities have sought to observe these distinctions strictly: for example, lexicographer Samuel Johnson in 1755, and master calligrapher Edward Johnston in 1906.
[7]Lee Ustick, writing in 1936, commented: To-day the distinction, among collectors of manuscripts, is that vellum is a highly refined form of skin, parchment a cruder form, usually thick, harsh, less highly polished than vellum, but with no distinction between skin of calf, or sheep, or of goat.
This account, originating in the writings of Pliny the Elder (Natural History, Book XIII, 69–70), is almost assuredly false because parchment had been in use in Anatolia and elsewhere long before the rise of Pergamon.
"[15] Civilizations such as the Assyrians and the Babylonians most commonly impressed their cuneiform on clay tablets, but they also wrote on parchment from the 6th century BC onward.
[citation needed] Following the arrival of printing in the later fifteenth century AD, the supply of animal skins for parchment could not keep up with the demands of printers.
Rabbinic literature traditionally maintains that the institution of employing parchment made of animal hides for the writing of ritual objects,[18] as detailed below.
Although parchment never stopped being used (primarily for governmental documents and diplomas) it had ceased to be a primary choice for artists' supports by the end of the 15th century Renaissance.
[20] Some contemporary artists prize the changeability of parchment, noting that the material seems alive and like an active participant in making artwork.
[citation needed] Hand-prepared skins are usually preferred by artists because they are more uniform in surface and have fewer oily spots – which can cause long-term cracking of paint – than mass-produced parchment, which is usually made for lamp shades, furniture, or other interior design purposes.
Both sides would be left open to the air so they could be scraped with a sharp, semi-lunar knife to remove the last of the hair and get the skin to the right thickness.
Rubbing pumice powder into the flesh side of parchment while it was still wet on the frame was used to make it smooth and to modify the surface to enable inks to penetrate more deeply.
"Cennini, a 15th-century craftsman provides recipes to tint parchment a variety of colours including purple, indigo, green, red and peach.
In the Babylonian Talmud (Bava Batra 14B), Moses is described as having written the first Torah Scroll on the unsplit cow-hide called gevil.
Parchment is still the only medium used by traditional religious Jews for Torah scrolls or tefilin and mezuzahs, and is produced by large companies in Israel.
The sulfuric acid hydrolyses and solubilises the main natural organic polymer, cellulose, present in the pulp wood fibers.
A silicone-coating treatment produces a cross-linked material with high density, stability and heat resistance and low surface tension which imparts good anti-stick or release properties.
In the nineteenth century, influenced by French romanticism, parchment crafters began adding floral themes and cherubs and hand embossing.
Parchment craft appears in hand made cards, as scrapbook embellishments, as bookmarks, lampshades, decorative small boxes, wall hangings and more.
[29] An article published in 2009 considered the possibilities of tracing the origin of medieval parchment manuscripts and codices through DNA analysis.
The methodology would employ polymerase chain reaction to replicate a small DNA sample to a size sufficiently large for testing.
