RE: VMs: Vellum - for Dana

[Koontz John E <John.Koontz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 31 Aug 2005, DANA SCOTT wrote:
> I believe that it was scribe-3 (the dark painter) who used the vellum
> with the velvety touch.

On textures ...

More from Bischoff, p. 9:  "[Insular scribes] makinly used calfskins,
which are stronger, and these they usually roughened on both sides with
pumice stone, with the results tha hair- and flesh-sides became
indistinguishable from one another ('vellum').  For special manuscripts,
it seems, sheep parchment too was used in England, ..."

P. 10:  "The slightly roughened surface of parchment prepared from
calfskins was particualrly suited to coulour painting.  As early as the
ninth century such leaves bearing miniatures were inserted into
manuscripts made from sheep parchment.  After the carolingian period the
use of calf parchment became commonplace."

The process f erasing a previous document to reuse its parchment also
involved buffing with pumice.

p. 11:  "The chances of recovering the original text vary greatly
according to the kind of ink used and the nature of the deletion (which
sometimes left only the prickings)."

Of course, I'm not an authority on any of this, and I suppose it's quite
possible to for calskin to have a more or less velvety texture depending
on details of its preparatrion.

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