Vellum

Vellum (from the Old French Vélin, for "calfskin") 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. more...

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Material

Strictly speaking in Jewish practice, vellum or klaf (Hebrew) should only be made from hide of a kosher animal, but in Christian Europe the term from the Roman times was used for the best quality of parchment regardless of the animal from which the hide was obtained.

There is also a modern imitation "vellum" made from cotton.

A small amount of true vellum is still made for writing Jewish scrolls of various sizes. The term can also refer to a manuscript or book written on such material.

Method of manufacture

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. 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.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. The terms vellum and parchment became confused early on; traditionally 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.

The important distinction between vellum (or parchment) and leather is that the former is not processed using tanning.

Manuscripts

All Sifrei Torah (Hebrew: ספר תורה ; plural: ספרי תורה, Sifrei Torah) are written on kosher klaf or vellum. Most medieval manuscripts, whether illuminated or not, were written on vellum. The very best quality, Uterine vellum, was made from the skins of still-born or even unborn animals. Some Gandharan Buddhist texts were written on vellum. 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. Paper soon took over for most book-printing, as it was cheaper and easier to process through a printing-press and bind.

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. Old master prints were sometimes printed on vellum, especially for presentation copies, until at least the seventeenth century.

Read more at Wikipedia.org