What is Parchment?
Parchment is defined as specially prepared skin for writing or painting on. Parchment might be produced from various animal skins, ranging from antelopes to donkeys, from fish to camels, but especially from, sheep, goats and calf. Although in old times the parchment made from the skin of animals taken from mothers womb, or stillborn were considered as the best parchment, it is obvious that such parchments were very rare. Parchment has always been, as it is today, a byproduct of meat. No animal is slaughtered in order to make parchment from its skin. Parchment is made out of skins of animals slaughtered for their meat.
Parchment was discovered in Bergama during the second century B.C., and was named after this city in all languages. During fifteen centuries beginning with its discovery, parchment which was the quintessential and sometimes the only writing material carried science of the antiquity to Renaissance as well as being the paper of the first Bibles and Qurans. The features such as uniqueness of every parchment, ability to write on both sides when duly processed, being almost tear proof, non-inflammability, extraordinary durability, suitability for calligraphy and illumination, easy legibility of the scripts on it without eye strain made parchment the finest writing material ever devised by man.While it is hard to read some papers written on thirty or forty years ago, parchments of one thousand five hundred years appear as written on a day ago.
Parchment, which assumed a more select position with the widespread use of paper, is produced currently in a small scale for artistic purposes, and used mostly by painters, bookbinders, decorators, designers, interior architects, calligraphers, and and moreover utilized for diplomas, citations, awards, retirement scrolls, memorial books, and every type of document that has to convey distinction, honor, importance, quality and excellence.