A description of our Graduate Student/Faculty Research Award project on “Parchment Making in the Medieval West“ Throughout the Middle Ages, parchment was the primary writing surface for transmission of the written word and was an essential tool for the creation of books, charters, legal documents, historical chronicles, and writing in general.  Made from animal hide,… Read more

After the first set of water and lime baths (part 1), the hide is then removed, rinsed, and scraped to separate all of the wool from the skin (part 2). Step 5. Next take out the skin for dehairing. This is perhaps the messiest part of Phase 1. Before removing the hide from the lime… Read more

To begin Phase I, we prepared the lamb’s hide for the first series of baths. The lamb’s hide was salted to keep it from going bad in transport, so first we rinsed the hide thoroughly to remove the salt. The hide was also a bit roughly hewn off, so we wanted to cut off the… Read more