Bad modern vellum.The art of preparing vellum of the finest kind is now lost; the vellum made in England is usually spoilt first by rubbing down the surface to make it unnaturally even, and then by loading it with a sort of priming of plaster and white lead, very much like the paper of a cheap memorandum book.
The best modern vellum is still made in Italy, especially in Rome. Good, stout, undoctored vellum of a fine, pure colour can be procured in Rome, though in limited quantities, and at a high price[[242]], but nothing is now made which resembles either the finest ivory-textured vellum of fifteenth century Italian manuscripts, or the exquisitely thin uterine vellum of the Anglo-Norman Bibles.
| Use of paper. |
Use of paper.Paper[[243]]. Though by far the majority of the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages are written on vellum, yet paper was occasionally used, long before the fifteenth century, when its manufacture was largely developed to supply the demand created by the invention of printing.
Paper made from the papyrus pith has been already described, see Chap. II. page [22].
| Mode of making paper. |
Mode of making paper.A very different process was used for the various kinds of paper which were made in mediaeval and modern times. The essence of the process consists in making a fine pulp of cotton or linen rags by long-continued pounding with water sufficient to give the mixture the consistency of thick cream. A handful of this fluid pulp is then spread evenly and thinly over the bottom of a fine wire sieve, through which the superfluous water drains away, leaving a thin, soft mass which is then turned out of the sieve, pressed, dried and finally soaked with size to make the paper fit to write on. This process leaves the wire-marks of the sieve indelibly printed on to the paper.
These marks are of two kinds, first, those of the stouter wires which run longitudinally along the sieve at intervals of about an inch or a little more, and secondly, very fine cross wires, placed close together, and woven in at right angles to the first-mentioned stouter wires.
| Water-marks. |
Water-marks.In the fourteenth century what are called water-marks came into use, together with the invention of linen paper. Some simple device indicating the city or province where the paper was made was woven with fine wire into the bottom of the sieve, and this mark was impressed upon the paper, like that of the other (parallel) wires of the sieve. A double-headed eagle, a vase, a letter or a bull's head are among the earliest paper-marks which occur in manuscripts and books of the fifteenth century[[244]]. In later times, during the sixteenth century, each manufacturer adopted his own mark[[245]]; and then still more recently the year-date has been added[[246]].