Thread by @Tweetistorian

Hello all! @SJLahey here, again. Let’s dive right in…

Yesterday, in my introductory overview thread, I opened with a teaser image showing a rather odd-looking piece of #parchment: part of an offcut.

https://twitter.com/tweetistorian/status/1440006759389798401?s=21

But what does that mean? What is an offcut? 🤔

[A preliminary note: The word ‘offcut’ (or ‘off-cut’) has other definitions than the one below, particularly in archaeology, but also in other fields. To keep things simple, I won’t go into them in these threads—but feel free to ask questions, either here or @SJLahey]

By way of technical definition, in #codicology, an offcut is ‘a piece of parchment originating as a remnant created by the second cuts’ (i.e., when the prepared plano sheet is squared up by pruning away lower-grade material from around its perimeter).

Oh. 😶 Right. Well then… 🙃

That’s a heap of information to take in, & undoubtedly raises questions. What is this ‘plano sheet’? How does one ‘prepare’ such a thing? Who cuts it? If the 2nd cuts square it up, what did the 1st cuts do? Why is the perimeter ‘lower-grade’?

To answer these questions—& make sense of that doozy of a definition—one first needs to understand what exactly #parchment is, and how it is made.

And so onward to parchment-making! 💪

The word ‘parchment’ (from ‘Pergamum’, a city in Asia Minor traditionally, albeit erroneously, thought to be the place where parchment originated) designates a laminate material, traditionally used as a writing support, & made from specially-prepared animal skin.

That last bit is key: parchment is skin.

Techniques used by western European parchment-makers during the Middle Ages (my focus) have been reconstructed using accounts from the era. Exact processes varied geographically & temporally, but a very simplified summary runs as follows:

[Warning for the sensitive: It ain’t pretty. Reference to animal harm follows.]

Step 1: Get a cow.* (See fig. 01.)

[* Or a sheep, or a goat. In sum, a domestic ruminant—or many ruminants, if you want a whole #manuscript book…

[For simplicity’s sake, we’ll assume that you have acquired* one (1) moo-cow.]

* How you went about doing so is entirely up to you, none of my business, and I shall bear no responsibility nor liability for any damages resulting therefrom.

2. Kill it. (😬 Sorry!) Flay the carcass, removing as much hide as possible.

3. Soak the hide in clean, ideally running, water for 1–2 days—longer if preserved or “old slayn”.

4. Soak the hide in a bath of water & unslaked lime (for anywhere from 3 days to a month depending*), regularly agitating or suspending it.

[* “Depending on what?”
Depending on things we lack space to unpack—ask if you’re curious.

[4b. Some then re-rinse the hide in water. Others would rather skip that step, take the afternoon off, & head to the pub or settle in with a good book. YMMV.]

5. Haul the sopping hide out of the bath for ‘fleshing’ or ‘scudding’—that is, removing lingering hair, fat, flesh, & connective tissue by draping the hide over a beam or trestle & working its surface with some kind of implement (details vary; we can discuss, if you like).

6. Lace the hide onto a wooden stretching frame—known in English as a ‘herse’ or ‘harrow’—for scraping & stretching under progressive tension. Special attachment systems helped mitigate tearing of the damp skin during this stage. A modern example follows in the next tweet.

Photo credit: Tom Pilston (I believe @tompilston; if not, I do apologize)
Caption: “Paul Wright, general Manager at William Cowley, Velum and parchment makers in Newport Pagnall, works on stretched calf skins to create Velum.”
Source: independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-n…

7. Plane, & shave, & scrape the hide, shucking off a froth of shavings with a crescent-shaped blade (termed a ‘lunellarium’ or ‘lunellum’). When suitably thin & dry, grind down the surface a bit more with pumice.

Congratulations! You did it. All that slaughter & stench & disarray has culminated in a sheet of pristine, creamy-smooth writing substrate: #parchment. 📜

📷: @UVicSC

But now, er, you’ve a bit of a problem.
It’s affixed to a frame. We said nothing about getting it off the frame.

“So … cut it down.”

Well, yes—but you’ll find the process is a smidgin more involved than that. …

Also, the parchment in that last photo looked suspiciously fine, no? Nothing at all like gnarly example with which I opened.

Why?

It just so happens that these two issues are related. To unpack them, our discussion will wade into, among other matters, #biochemistry.

THAT will be our initial focus tomorrow morning*.
For now, I leave a photograph † for your consideration.

[* I write to you, gentle readers, from ADT; it is 21h04 in my personal universe.
[† 📷 taken by @SJLahey at Designing English (@UniofOxford, 01 Dec 2017–22 Apr 2018)