Chapter XIV · The Materials and Technical Processes of the Illuminator.

Finest vellum.

Finest vellum.Vellum for scribes^[238]. The most remarkable skill is shown by the perfection to which the art of preparing vellum^[239] for the scribe was brought. The exquisitely thin uterine vellum, which was specially used for the minutely written Anglo-Norman Vulgates of the thirteenth century, has been already described; see page 113. For ivory-like beauty of colour and texture nothing could surpass the best Italian vellum of the fifteenth century.

One occasional use of the very thin uterine vellum should be noted. For example in a German twelfth century copy of the Vulgate, now in the Corpus library in Cambridge, some of the miniature pictures have been painted on separate pieces of uterine vellum, and then pasted into their place on the thicker vellum pages of the manuscript. This, however, is an exceptional thing.

High price of vellum.

High price of vellum.The vellum used for illuminated manuscripts appears to have been costly, partly on account of the skill and labour that were required for its production, and, in the case of uterine vellum on account of the great number of animals' skins that were required to provide enough material for the writing of a single manuscript such as a copy of the Vulgate.

Cost of vellum.

Cost of vellum.Even the commoner kind of parchment used for official documents was rather a costly thing. The roll with the Visitation expenses of Bishop Swinfield, Bishop of Hereford from 1282 to 1317, shows that 150 sheets of parchment cost 3s. 4d., about £4 in modern value^[240].

The vellum used for manuscripts has a different texture on its two sides. One side, that on which the hair grew, has a mat, unglossy surface; the other (interior) side of the skin is perfectly smooth and, in the case of the finest vellum, has a beautifully glossy texture like that of polished ivory.

In writing a manuscript the scribe was careful to arrange his pages so that two glossy and two dull pages came opposite each other^[241].

Bad modern vellum.

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].

Evidence of date.

Evidence of date.These paper-marks in some cases afford useful evidence as to the origin and date of a manuscript or printed book; but too much reliance should not be placed on such evidence, since paper often remained for a long time in stock, and the productions of one manufactory were frequently exported for use by the scribes and printers of more than one distant country^[247].

Paper of Oriental make has no water-mark, but the earliest linen-paper of the fourteenth century made in Christian Europe always has a water-mark of some kind, very clearly visible.

Earliest cotton paper.

Earliest cotton paper.The dates of paper manufacture. The earliest paper appears to have been made in China at a date even before the Christian Era. Its manufacture was next extended in Syria, and especially to Damascus^[248]. This early paper was made of the cotton-plant, the "tree-wool" of Herodotus. Hence it was called charta bombycina or Damascena, or, from its silky texture, charta serica. Paper of this class, almost as beautiful in texture as vellum, is still made in the East and used for the fine illuminated manuscripts of India, Persia and other Moslem countries.

Arab MSS. on paper.

Arab MSS. on paper.Many Arab manuscripts written on cotton-paper of as early a date as the ninth century still exist. The Moslem conquerors of Spain and Sicily introduced the manufacture of this charta bombycina into western Europe, and to some small extent it was used for Greek and Latin manuscripts during the tenth and eleventh centuries. It was, however, rarely used in Christian Europe till the thirteenth century.

Wool-paper.

Wool-paper.At first cotton only was used in the manufacture of paper, but gradually a mixture first of wool and then of flax or linen was introduced.

Peter, who was Abbot of Cluny from 1122 to 1150, in his treatise Adversus Judaeos mentions manuscripts written on wool-paper, made "ex rasuris veterum pannorum."

Linen paper.

Linen paper.In the fourteenth century linen-paper began to be made; at first mixed with wool, and then of pure linen. This fourteenth century paper is distinguishable by its stoutness, its close texture, and its thick wire-marks; the water-mark being especially clear and transparent. Paper was frequently used for official documents, charters and the like before it came into use for manuscript books^[249].

Early MS. on paper.

Early MS. on paper.The British Museum possesses one of the oldest known books on paper (Arundel Manuscripts, 268); this is a collection of Astronomical treatises written by an Italian scribe early in the thirteenth century.

In the fourteenth century the Spanish manufactories of cotton-paper were on the decline, and the first manufactory of linen-paper was started at Fabriano in northern Italy. In 1340 another manufactory was set up in Padua, and before the close of the fourteenth century paper was made in nearly all the chief cities of northern Italy, especially in Milan and Venice, and as far south as Florence and Siena.

In Germany paper-making began in Mentz in about 1320; and in 1390 a manufactory was started at Nuremberg with the aid of Italian workmen. South Germany, however, was supplied with paper from northern Italy till the fifteenth century.

In Paris and other places in France paper began to be made soon after the first manufactories in Italy were started.

Paper in England.

Paper in England.In England cotton-paper, especially for legal documents, was largely used in the fourteenth century. In Oxford, in the year 1355, a quire of paper, small folio size, cost five pence, equal in modern value to eight or nine shillings. In the fifteenth century its value had decreased to three pence or four pence the quire.

Paper does not appear to have been made in England till the reign of Henry VII.; before that time it was mainly imported from Germany and the Netherlands.

Earliest English paper.

Earliest English paper.All Caxton's books are printed on foreign paper, and the first book printed on paper which was made in England was Wynkyn de Worde's Bartholomaeus, De proprietatibus rerum, printed about the year 1495, four years after Caxton's death, with the following interesting colophon, which alludes to the first paper manufactory in England, set up by John Tate at Hertford.

This colophon, which does not do credit to Wynkyn de Worde's literary style, runs thus:

During the fifteenth century the making of paper reached its highest degree of perfection, and in the following century its excellence began to decline.

Beauty of Venetian paper.

Beauty of Venetian paper.The Venetian paper of about 1470, used, for example, in the printed books of Nicolas Jenson and other printers in Venice, is a substance of very great beauty and durability, inferior only in appearance to the very best sort of vellum. It is very strong, of a fine creamy tint, and sized^[250] with great skill, so as to have a beautiful glossy texture. For the illuminator's purpose it appears to have been almost as good as vellum. It even receives the raised mordant for burnished gold of the highest beauty and brilliance.

The very small quantity of good paper that is now manufactured, mainly for artistic purposes, is made by hand in exactly the same way that was employed in the fourteenth or fifteenth century.

Most paper is now made by machinery, and as a rule contains more esparto grass than pure linen fibre.