Vellum (from the Old French Vélin, for "calfskin"^[1]) is a sort of processed animal hide that is thin, smooth, durable and was used in the pre-printing age to produce written works in the form of a scroll, codex or book. Old French was the Romance Dialect continuum spoken in territories which span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium Hides are Skins obtained from animals for human use Examples of animal hide sources are Deer and Cattle typically used for producing Leather, Printing is a process for reproducing text and image typically with ink on Paper using a printing press A scroll is a roll of Papyrus, Parchment, or Paper which has been written drawn or painted upon for the purpose of transmitting information or using as A codex ( Latin for block of wood, Book; plural codices) is a book in the format used for modern books with separate pages normally A Book is a set or collection of written printed illustrated or blank sheets made of Paper, Parchment, or other material usually fastened together Modern "paper vellum" is used for a variety of purposes, especially for plans, technical drawings and blueprints. A blueprint is a type of paper-based reproduction usually of a Technical drawing, documenting an Architecture or an Engineering design

Material and manufacture

A vellum deed with seal tag dated 1638. A deed is a Legal instrument used to grant a Right. Deeds are part of the broader category of documents under seal. A seal can mean a wax seal bearing an impressed figure or an embossed figure in paper with the purpose of authenticating a document but the term can also mean any device for

In Europe the term from Roman times was used for the best quality of parchment regardless of the animal from which the hide was obtained, calf, sheep and goat all being commonly used. Parchment is a thin material made from Calfskin, Sheepskin or goatskin. The very best quality, Uterine vellum, was made from the skins of still-born or even unborn animals. Strictly speaking in Jewish practice, vellum or klaf (Hebrew) should only be made from the hide of a kosher animal; deer was preferred historically.

Vellum was originally a translucent or opaque material produced from calfskin of an unborn calf that had been soaked, limed, and scudded (a depilatory process), and then dried at normal temperature under tension, usually on a wooden device called a stretching frame. In Optics, transparency (also called pellucidity) is the Material property of allowing Opacity is the measure of impenetrability to electromagnetic or other kinds of radiation especially visible Light. Materials are physical Substances used as inputs to production or Manufacturing. Vellum (from the Old French Vélin for "calfskin" is mammal skin prepared for writing or printing on single pages scrolls codices or books Calcium hydroxide, traditionally called slaked lime, hydrated lime, or pickling lime, is a Chemical compound with the chemical formula Hair removal describes any method of removing Hair, especially from the human body Temperature is a physical property of a system that underlies the common notions of hot and cold something that is hotter generally has the greater temperature A picture frame is a container added to a picture in order to enhance it make it easier to display or in some cases to protect it However, except for Jewish use, animal vellum can include hide from any animal, including calfskin, sheepskin, or virtually any other skin obtained from a relatively small animal, e. Vellum (from the Old French Vélin for "calfskin" is mammal skin prepared for writing or printing on single pages scrolls codices or books Sheepskin is the hide of a sheep, sometimes also called lambskin or lambswool. Rawhide is a hide or animal skin that has not been exposed to Tanning. g. , antelope, deer or goat and even a piglet although they are generally too small for the purpose, and equine foals although these are far too valuable as working animals. Antelope are Ruminant hoofed Mammals of the family Bovidae in the order of Even-toed ungulates. A deer is a Ruminant Mammal belonging to the family Cervidae. The domestic goat ( Capra aegagrus hircus) is a subspecies of goat Domesticated from the Wild goat of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe The terms vellum and parchment became confused early on; according to some sources the former was made from an unsplit calfskin, and consequently had a grain pattern on one side (unless removed by scraping), while the latter was produced from the flesh split of a sheep or goat or other kind of skin, and consequently had no grain pattern. Vellum always denoted the higher quality in any case.

The important distinction between vellum (or parchment) and leather is that the former is not processed using tanning. Leather is a material created through the Tanning of hides and Skins of Animals primarily Cattlehide The Tanning process Tanning is the process of converting Putrescible skin into non-putrescible Leather, usually with Tannin, an Acidic Chemical compound

Manuscripts

The earliest painted Self-Portrait (1493) by Albrecht Dürer; originally executed in oil on vellum, now transferred to linen. Albrecht Dürer (ˈalbʀɛçt ˈdyʀɐ ( May 21, 1471 &ndash April 6, 1528) was a German painter, Printmaker Louvre, Paris

Most of the finer sort of medieval manuscripts, whether illuminated or not, were written on vellum. The Louvre Museum (Musée du Louvre located in Paris is the world's most visited art museum a historic monument and a national museum of France Paris (ˈpærɨs in English; in French) is the Capital of France and the country's largest city An illuminated manuscript is a Manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration such as decorated Initials borders and Some Gandharan Buddhist texts were written on vellum, and all Sifrei Torah (Hebrew: ספר תורה ; plural: ספרי תורה, Sifrei Torah) are written on kosher klaf or vellum. The Gandhāran Buddhist Texts are the oldest Buddhist manuscripts yet discovered dating from about the first century CE and also the oldest Indian manuscripts yet discovered term " Torah " ( Hebrew: תּוֹרָה "teaching" or "instruction" sometimes translated as "Law" most commonly refers to

A quarter of the 180 copy edition of Johannes Gutenberg's first Bible printed in 1455 with movable type was also printed on vellum, presumably because his market expected this for a high-quality book. Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg ( 1398 &ndash February 3, 1468) was a German Goldsmith and printer who is credited Gutenberg Bible (also known as the 42-line Bible or the Mazarin Bible) is a printed version of the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible that Movable type is the system of Printing and Typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual letters or punctuation Paper soon took over for most book-printing, as it was cheaper and easier to process through a printing-press and bind. Paper is thin material mainly used for writing upon printing upon or packaging A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a medium (such as paper or cloth thereby transferring an image BIND ( Berkeley Internet Name Domain or "named" is the most commonly used DNS server on the Internet especially on Unix -like systems where it

In art, vellum was used widely for paintings, especially if they needed to be sent long distances, before canvas became widely used in about 1500, and continued to be used for drawings, and watercolours. Painting (pān'tīng in Art, is the practice of applying Color to a Surface (support base such as e Canvas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fabric used for making Sails Tents Marquees Backpacks and other functions Drawing is a Visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium Watercolor ( US) or Watercolour ( UK) (and "aquarelle" in French is a Painting method Old master prints were sometimes printed on vellum, especially for presentation copies, until at least the seventeenth century. An old master print is a work of art produced by a Printing process within the Western tradition (European or New World

Limp vellum or limp-parchment bindings were used frequently in the 16th and 17th centuries, and were sometimes gilt but were also often not embellished. Limp vellum is a Bookbinding method used commonly in the 16th and 17th Centuries See also Ornament (music. In Sewing and crafts an embellishment is anything that adds design interest to the piece In later centuries vellum has been more commonly used like leather, that is, as the covering for stiff board bindings. Vellum can be stained virtually any color but seldom is, as a great part of its beauty and appeal rests in its faint grain and hair markings, as well as its warmth and simplicity.

Lasting in excess of 1,000 years—Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care (Troyes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 504), for example dates from about 600 and is in excellent condition—animal vellum can be far more durable than paper. Troyes Bibliotheque Municipale MS 504 is an early 7th century Illuminated manuscript of the Pastoral Care by Pope Gregory I. For this reason, many important documents have been written on animal vellum, such as diplomas. Indeed, referring to a diploma as a "sheepskin" alludes to the time when diplomas were written on vellum made from animal hides.

Another example of a document written on vellum is the Irish bog psalter, discovered in July 2006 in a bog in Ireland, which was written over 1,000 years ago. An early mediaeval Christian Psalter (prayer book was discovered in a Bog in July 2006, in the townland of Faddan More A bog or mire is a Wetland type that accumulates Acidic Peat, a deposit of dead plant material &ndash usually Mosses but also

Modern use

British Acts of Parliament are still printed on vellum for archival purposes,^[2] as are those of the Republic of Ireland. An Act of Parliament is a Law enacted as Primary legislation by a national or sub-national Parliament. Ireland ( Irish: Éire, ˈeːrʲə is a country in north-western Europe. ^[3] True vellum is still used for Jewish scrolls, of the Torah in particular, for luxury book-binding, memorial books, and for various documents in calligraphy. PLEASE TAKE NOTE************ A scroll is a roll of Papyrus, Parchment, or Paper which has been written drawn or painted upon for the purpose of transmitting information or using as term " Torah " ( Hebrew: תּוֹרָה "teaching" or "instruction" sometimes translated as "Law" most commonly refers to Calligraphy (from Greek kallos "beauty" + graphẽ "writing" is the art of writing (Mediavilla 1996 17

Today, because of low demand and complicated manufacturing process, animal vellum is expensive and hard to find. A modern imitation is made out of cotton. Known as paper vellum, this material is considerably cheaper than animal vellum and can be found in most art and drafting supply stores. Some brands of writing-paper and other sorts of paper use the term "vellum" merely to suggest quality, when it is actually not vellum.

Paper vellum

Modern imitation or "paper vellum" made from plasticized cotton. Cotton is a soft staple Fibre that grows around the seeds of the cotton plant ( Gossypium sp Usually translucent, paper vellum is often used in applications where tracing is required, such as architectural plans. Like natural vellum, the synthetic is more dimensionally stable than a linen or paper sheet, which is frequently critical in the development of large scaled drawings and plans such as Blueprints. A blueprint is a type of paper-based reproduction usually of a Technical drawing, documenting an Architecture or an Engineering design It was also extremely important in that reproduction technology for dissemination of the plans as like a high quality natural vellum, it could be produced in a thin enough sheet to be virtually transparent to strong light enabling a source drawing to be used directly in the reproduction of field-used drawings.

During the last century, antedating integrated CAD and modern laser printing which only came about after development of VLSI based microprocessors, synthetic vellums were at the heart of any large engineering or architectural project. A laser printer is a common type of Computer printer that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics on plain paper A microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a Central processing unit (CPU on a single Integrated "Blueprints" are a copy of such master drawings, and are used as the field and day to day references originally drafted on the vellum masters. Large paper drawings require an additional step (tracing paper amenable to letting light pass through it, and hence is more error prone)

Drafting vellums eventually came to be standardized into a series of drawing sizes known as "A-size", "B-size", . . . , "G-size" drawings which doubled in sheet size area with every step. Indeed, VLSI microcircuits themselves were laid out on such vellums layer by layer, "masked" to the dimensions of the given layer (a tracing step of sorts), and those masks photographed, all to scale in very large specialty light boxes. In photography a lightbox has several applications One is a container with several Lightbulbs and a pane of Frosted glass on the top The negatives (known as photomicrographs, photo+micro+graph) thus obtained, were then step-reproduced in carefully aligned arrays and etched onto a glass plate Master of that layer.

In short huge dimensional drawings representing the guts of an integrated circuit were scaled down optically and reproduced to produce each layer of the computer chips which eventually came to be part of the systems which replaced the vellums that made the CAD technology possible. Large scale hand drafted drawings in today's world are unusual and rare, but the old technology still exists and is the foundation upon which the modern computerized world is built. It is still common for engineers and architects to work out the details of a concept, so called "Sketches" on paper drawings before going to CAD. Even in the heyday of hand drafted blueprint technology technical workers found that working with a sketch was an aid to clear thinking.

Preservation

Vellum is typically stored in a stable environment with constant temperature and 30% (+/-5%) relative humidity. Relative humidity is a measurement of the amount of Water vapor that exists in a gaseous mixture of air and water If vellum is stored in an environment with less than 11% relative humidity, it becomes fragile, brittle, and susceptible to mechanical stresses; if it is stored in an environment with greater than 40% relative humidity, it becomes vulnerable to gelation and to mold or fungus growth. ^[4]

References

1. ^ Online Etymological Dictionary
2. ^ BBC report on Parliament's continued use of vellum
3. ^ Frequently Asked Questions about the Houses of the Oireachtas - Tithe an Oireachtais
4. ^ Eric F. Hansen and Steve N. Lee, “The Effects of Relative Humidity on Some Physical Properties of Modern Vellum: Implications for the Optimum Relative Humidity for the Display and Storage of Parchment,” The Book and Paper Group Annual (1991).

See also

• Golden Fleece

External links

• On-line demonstration of the preparation of vellum from the BNF, Paris. Text in French, but mostly visual.
• Contains advice on cleaning of vellum