Vellum is derived from the Latin word "vitulinum" meaning "made from calf" (I tend to think vellum = veal). The process of making vellum is slow and labourious, thus making it quite expensive.
The parchmenter (the person who made parchments) first had to visit the local abattoir and choose only the best skins. They would also have to consider the colour of the fur or wool as this would reflect in the end product. Vellum documents contain the original colour of the animals skin so white lambs and calves would produce white parchment whilst brindle calves or piebald goats produced a brown marbled effect. Animals with ticks, disease or injuries were usually ignored.
Preparing the skins
The process of preparing the skin began by washing it in clear running water until it was clean, some sources say this took a day and a night, others say until it was clean enough. As the skin begins to decompose, the hairs loosen and fall out naturally. However the process was usually hurried along by soaking the skins in a solution of lime and water for three to ten days, stirring several times daily with a pole.The wet and slippery skins are then removed and draped over a rack hair-side up. The parchmenter then begins scudding by scraping away the hair with a long bladed knife with wooden handles at each end. The hairs come off very easily in this process. However removing the fat and tissue on the underside is more difficult. The hairless skin is stretched out tightly on a purpose made frame called a herse and the fat and other residue is removed with a rounded blade called a lunellum using a short scratching motion. The skin is very tough but flexible and rarely splits or breaks but if it does, it is quickly repaired. Initially the skins are kept damp whilst work continues to remove hair, fat and other residue.
The next stage involves drying the skins. These skins are still damp and flexible. Whilst still stretched out on the frame, pegs (nails would cause holes as the skin shrinks) are regularly tightened to continue the stretching process whilst the drying continues. This usually takes about a week.
Once the skins are completely dry, they are carefully cut from the frames taking great care not to crease them as now they are quite brittle and a crease would be hard to remove or repair. The dried vellum was then carefully rolled ready to be sold.
Preparing manuscripts
The hairless side is the preferred side to be written on as the hairy side usually had remains of hair
follicles and sometimes small scars. The average calfskin would produce about three and a half medium sheets of writing material.
"Once the vellum is prepared, traditionally a quire is formed of a group of several sheets. Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham point out, in "Introduction to Manuscript Studies", that "the quire was the scribe's basic writing unit throughout the Middle Ages". Guidelines are then made on the membrane. They note "'pricking' is the process of making holes in a sheet of parchment (or membrane) in preparation of its ruling. The lines were then made by ruling between the prick marks...The process of entering ruled lines on the page to serve as a guide for entering text. Most manuscripts were ruled with horizontal lines that served as the baselines on which the text was entered and with vertical bounding lines that marked the boundaries of the columns".
Taken from Wikipedia.orgThe cut sheets are then 'sanded', a process called pouncing, to ensure the ink would adhere well.
You can watch a short video taken from BBC 2's documentary on 'Domesday'.
COMING SOON: How Medieval Ink was made.
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