BPG Parchment Examination and Documentation

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Book and Paper Group Wiki > Paper Conservation Wiki > Parchment Examination and Documentation

This page covers the examination and documentation of parchment. See also: BPG Parchment, BPG Parchment Condition Problems, BPG Parchment Conservation Treatment, BPG Parchment Housing and Storage, and BPG Parchment Parchment Historic Treatment Methods and Materials.

Wiki Compiler: Cathie Magee
Wiki Contributors: Kathryn Kenney, your name could be here

Copyright 2025. The AIC Wiki is a publication of the American Institute for Conservation (AIC). It is published as a convenience for the members of AIC. Publication does not endorse nor recommend any treatments, methods, or techniques described herein. Information on researching with and citing the wiki can be found on the Reference and Bibliography Protocols page.

Cite this page:

American Institute for Conservation (AIC). "BPG Parchment Examination and Documentation." AIC Wiki. January 21, 2025. https://www.conservation-wiki.com/wiki/BPG_Parchment_Examination_and_Documentation.

Features of Parchment

Related: BPG Parchment–Parchment Manufacture.

When describing a parchment substrate, it is essential to distinguish between damage to the object and the variety of characteristics and features commonly seen in parchment that result from the physical experiences of the live animal or from the manufacture of the parchment. These should further be differentiated from damage to the object and any previously attempted repairs, both historic and modern. Damages that may have occurred to a parchment artifact over time can sometimes be confused with certain natural irregularities in the skin, or with alterations that may have been carried out during the making of the object. Distinction between these features can also be helpful prior to treatment. Since many features can be altered by certain treatments, it is important to record their presence beforehand and to carefully consider one's treatment approach in order to ensure that these features are preserved.

See Vnoucek (2005), Clarkson (1992).

Species Identification in Parchment

Determining that an artifact is indeed made from parchment (see Parchment vs. Paper) is essential before beginning treatment. In addition, knowing the animal from which the parchment was made and its method of manufacture will help a conservator anticipate how the skin will react under specific treatment procedures. For example, for parchment made from modern flesh split sheepskin rather than a skin with an intact grain layer, the conservator would know in advance to use caution in certain drying, mending, and mounting procedures that might put undue tension on such an inherently weak type of parchment and cause damage. [citation needed]

Visual Identification

When encountering parchment, most conservators rely on visual examination to identify the specific animal origin of parchment. The relevant features include the follicle pattern, veining, natural scars and bruises, delamination, and fat deposits in certain skins and are visible under close examination with a hand lens or a microscope. Often, the follicle pattern is more pronounced across bony areas of the animal, such as along the ribs and spine, and depending on the species, the hair follicles may be spaced closer together in these areas than elsewhere. Raking, transmitted, and ultraviolet light often help to make these features more prominent. Ultraviolet light has proved useful in the identification of tannins which were applied to the surface of early Jewish parchments such as the Dead Sea Scrolls (Reed 1972).

It is advisable to describe species identification as suggested rather than definite. In many cases, the follicle patterns are not visible or the parchment is so heavily processed that visual identification is difficult at best. For example, Vnoucek (2021) describes the difficulty of distinguishing calf skin parchment, largely regarded as the best quality parchment from the Late Antique to Medieval ages, from well-prepared sheepskin parchment.

[Gallery of images here]

Analytical Identification

While a visual identification of the species of parchment is usually sufficient, it is imprecise. "This method relies heavily on the subjective experience and training of the user, which can lead to errors (for example, many catalogued sheepskin parchments are classified as vellum) as natural biological variation can often lead to misidentification," (Fiddyment et al. 2019). [Note: in the quote, vellum refers specifically to calf.] Analysis of proteins or DNA in parchment fibers can be much more accurate, and may even assist in determining the origin or provenance of an object.

[BIOCODICOLOGY. Peptide ID, DNA analysis, cursory summary of available techniques]

Cross-sections of parchment can be examined under the light microscope and with scanning electron microscopy (SEM).

[Gallery of images, cross sections]

Parchment vs. Paper

Parchment derived from split skins lack a surface grain and have a much more uniform appearance from recto to verso than traditional parchment. The lack of particular surface characteristics on split skins can often make them difficult to distinguish from highly calendared papers, often known as "parchment paper" or "vellum paper." Such papers were heavily processed and can sometimes be mistaken for parchment. Unfortunately, the simplest tests for distinguishing paper from parchment are invasive or destructive. The identification of protein using the biuret test can be performed on a sample; however, in using this test, one cannot distinguish between real parchment and a paper that was heavily sized with gelatin (see Spot Tests). In that situation, other methods of analysis are recommended. If a very small sliver of sample can be taken, a simple flame test on true parchment will result in the pungent odor of burnt protein. This test requires no expensive analytical equipment or lab.

Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis can be used to non-destructively differentiate between parchment (protein) and paper (cellulose) even when the paper has been heavily sized with a protein size. A paper coated on both sides would be distinguished by a higher proportion of calcium or other opaque white pigment. (Certain types of parchment documents and most parchment book covers were heavily dressed with chalk on the flesh side and would therefore give high calcium readings with FTIR analysis. It is more unlikely, however, for these objects to be mistaken for paper during visual examination.)

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Marks of Biology

The best medieval manuscripts were produced with extremely high quality parchment that bore little evidence of its animal origins. More often, books were produced with whatever parchment was available or affordable. This parchment made a perfectly adequate writing surface but might have contained artifacts of the animal's physiology that would have otherwise been removed by the parchment maker (through longer or more careful periods of scraping) or by the person cutting the bifolia (and avoiding "blemishes").

Follicle patterns

animal source; hair and flesh sides of the skin; spine direction of the animal as oriented on the sheet

Axilla

The irregular edges of a parchment sheet may reflect the outer perimeters of a skin, where a natural curve follows the outline of the animal's leg. Particularly stiff and horny areas in a given sheet may represent the outer ends of the skin, shoulders or butt, whereas weaker, more fleshy areas usually come from the axillae (armpit) and belly of the animal. (Many of these features are more thoroughly described and illustrated in Cains 1992.)

Scars and holes

Scars or wounds in the animal skin would occasionally open up while the skin was wet and taught during the scraping portion of the parchment manufacturing process. Scribes often simply wrote around the holes.

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  Parchment scar in sheepskin bifolium near the gutter.

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  Scribes wrote around this hole in a folio margin.

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Marks of Manufacture

Features relating to preparation by parchment maker: animal source; hair and flesh sides of the skin; spine direction of the animal as oriented on the sheet; thickness of the skin (can vary greatly across the surface of a single sheet); full thickness or split skin; surface characteristics (degree and evenness of scraping, napped or smooth, presence of surface coatings, etc.); imperfections (scars, bruises, original repairs, etc.); location and degree of cockling and/ or pleating; irregularities in shape of sheet (often indicate its previous location in full animal skin).

Scrape marks: The process of making a sheet of parchment from animal skin often left distinctive marks from the rounded knife used to scrape the skin clean.

During the manufacturing process, it was not uncommon for scars or wounds in the skin to split open due to being stretched on the frame. It is also possible for the lunar knife to have cut through the skin, though it is difficult to tell the difference. Any area of weakness could split under the tension and form a rounded hole. These holes could be left open, often with a slight ridge forming around the opening. These holes often appear in the margins of manuscripts but can also be found in areas of text in books where economic concerns were prioritized over aesthetic ones. Holes were occasionally covered with a parchment patch, but scribes also wrote around the open hole, simply skipping over it.

Alternatively to leaving the hole open, it could have been sewn closed by the parchment maker while the skin was still wet.

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Marks of Use and Reuse

For damages, see BPG Parchment Condition Problems.

[copied from original] Features relating to use by scribe, artist, bookbinder: pricking holes - size and shape; ruling lines - made with stylus, metalpoint or pen and ink; underdrawing - usually in thin pen lines or washes; plate marks made by printing; marginal notes/instructions by scribe; creases indicating how a parchment document was originally folded; impressions made by sewing thread in gutter of book - often still visible in intact bifolia or single manuscript leaves; sewing holes - made for attachment of fabric interleaving to illuminated manuscript leaves in bound books.

Scribal marks

Features relating to use by scribe, artist, bookbinder: pricking holes - size and shape; ruling lines - made with stylus, metalpoint or pen and ink; underdrawing - usually in thin pen lines or washes; plate marks made by printing; marginal notes/instructions by scribe;

See Clemens and Graham 2007.

Binding marks

impressions made by sewing thread in gutter of book - often still visible in intact bifolia or single manuscript leaves; sewing holes - made for attachment of fabric interleaving to illuminated manuscript leaves in bound books.

Folds

Large documents such as deeds and indentures were folded for storage. When unfolded, areas of soiling can indicate which areas of the document were on the outside when folded.

Repairs

Original Repairs, Compensation and Joins

Original repairs and compensation are usually absent in fine art on parchment (i.e., paintings, drawings and prints) because the artist only needed a single sheet for his work and was therefore able to choose one of very high quality. On the other hand, many sheets of parchment were required for a manuscript book, rolled document or large map or architectural plan. Although the craftsman might have preferred to have the skins all of fine quality, his choice was often limited to what was available or by the amount of money he was able to pay for good skins. In general, folio size manuscript books (and, by association, their detached leaves) tend to have a greater number of original repairs than much smaller manuscripts of the same type.

Sewn Repairs

Repairs to parchment were often done while the skin was still wet or damp, before it was dried on the frame. These types of repairs, sewn in a figure of eight pattern across the damaged area, can be recognized by the bunching up of the damp skin and the pulling on the sewing holes that would occur as the skin dried under tension (Clarkson 1992, Figs. 22, 23, 36, 37). Sewn repairs in dry skins were also carried out by the parchment maker or by the scribe at a later stage and would tend to look quite different, with the sewing holes still circular in shape and not extended (Clarkson 1992, Fig. 38). In both cases these repairs were most often done with linen thread, but sometimes silk thread or narrow strips of parchment were also employed. In cases where the available parchment sheet was of an irregular shape, due to its having been cut along the outer perimeter of the full skin, additional pieces would be attached to compensate for the irregularity. These pieces were usually secured by sewing with thread or parchment thongs. Sewing was also a common technique for the joining of multiple pieces of parchment to form a scroll. Both thread and a type of sinew or gut (in the case of Hebrew manuscripts) were used as sewing materials. (Certain types of medieval parchment documents made in scroll form often had textile or leather covers sewn onto the upper end. When the document was rolled up these covers would protect the object from damage during storage or transport.)

Patched Repairs

Patched repairs usually were carried out with a similar if not identical type of parchment as the original. Contemporary patches of transparent goldbeater's skin are much less common than parchment repairs although they have been recorded in some early manuscripts such as the 6th century Vienna Dioscurides (Wächter 1962, p.25). Original patches usually cover small holes that developed during the manufacturing process; it is assumed that they were attached with a collagen-based adhesive such as parchment size. Although these repairs could be performed by the parchment maker on the finished sheet, once it was removed from the frame, they were more likely to have been executed in the scribal workshop. In many cases final preparation of the surface (pumicing, chalking) would be done after the repairs were completed, thus making the scarfed joins that much more invisible (Clarkson 1992, Figs. 33, 34).

Fills or Compensation

Larger pieces of parchment are sometimes used to compensate for the irregular edge of a given sheet. These patches or “fills” are applied in the same manner as smaller patched repairs, by scarfing the overlapped areas and attaching the parchment piece with adhesive. Multiple pieces of parchment would often be joined to make one very large sheet, to be used for an architectural drawing or garden plan, or for a rolled document. These pieces of parchment were connected with overlapped adhesive joins which, although perfectly functional, would not always be as precisely executed as patches or joins found in medieval manuscripts.

See also: BPG Parchment–Palimpsests and BPG Parchment–Fragments

Features of Parchment References | top

Imaging of Parchment

[reference PMG Examination and Documentation as needed]

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  Normal light image of manuscript page MS 54.7, The Library of Congress. Image captured with modified Nikon D800 with filters.

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Visible Light

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Ultraviolet

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Infrared

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False Color Infrared

False color IR photography can be used as a "quick and dirty" technique to identify medieval pigments if more precise methods involving elemental analysis are not available. The technique was originally developed for film cameras using colored filters. With DSLR cameras, a modified camera body with the internal filters removed is required plus additional lenses to allow certain IR spectra through. The specifics of this technique are detailed in the False Color Infrared section of "Digital Imaging Workflow for Treatment Documentation" from the Conservation Division at the Library of Congress (Edwards and Oey, 2018).

The resulting color shift from the normal light image to the FCIR image can indicate which pigments were used and sometimes differentiate between pigments of the same color. Below is a table of some commonly occurring pigments in the medieval palette and their color shifts (from Douma 2008, "Pigments through the Ages").

Table 1. Commonly occurring medieval pigments and their color shifts from normal light photography to FCIR.

Pigment	Normal light	False Color IR
Vermilion	red	yellow
Red lead	red/orage	yellow/brown
Madder	red/purple	orange
Orpiment	yellow	pale yellow/white
Verdigris	green	dark blue
Azurite	blue	dark blue
Ultramarine	blue	red

Cicero et al. 2016

Imaging Parchment References | top

References

Species Identification in Parchment

Fiddyment, Sarah, Matthew D. Teasdale, Jiří Vnouček, Élodie Lévêque, Annelise Binois, and Matthew J. Collins. 2019. "So You Want to Do Biocodicology? A Field Guide to the Biological Analysis of Parchment." Heritage Science 7 (1): 35.

Reed, Ronald. Ancient Skins, Parchments and Leathers, London-New York: Seminar Press, 1972.

Vnouček, Jiří. 2021. "Not All That Shines like Vellum Is Necessarily So." Care and Conservation of Manuscripts 17: 27–60.

Features of Parchment

Abt, Jeffrey and Margaret A. Fusco. "A Byzantine Scholar's Letter on the Preparation of Manuscript Vellum." Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 28, no. 2 (1989): 61-66.

Aceto, Maurizio, Aldo Arrais, Francesco Marsano, Angelo Agostino, Gaia Fenoglio, Ambra Idone, and Monica Gulmini. 2015. "A Diagnostic Study on Folium and Orchil Dyes with Non-Invasive and Micro-Destructive Methods." Spectrochimica Acta. Part A, Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy 142 (May): 159–68.

Bykova, G. Z. "Medieval Painting on Parchment: Technique, Preservation and Restoration." Restaurator 14:3(1993): 188-97.

Cains, Anthony. 1992. "The Vellum of the Book of Kells." The Paper Conservator 16: 50-61.

Clarkson, Christopher. 1992. "Rediscovering Parchment: The Nature of the Beast." The Paper Conservator 16 (1): 5–26.

Clemens, Raymond and Timothy Graham. 2007. Introduction to Manuscript Studies. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Haines, Betty M. Bookbinding Leather 7 (1987): 63-82.

Jenkins, Penny. "Printing on Parchment or Vellum." The Paper Conservator 16 (1992): 31-39.

Kireyeva, Vilena. 1999. "Examination of Parchment in Byzantine Manuscripts." Restaurator 20 (1): 39–47.

Porter, Cheryl. 2018. "The Materiality of the Blue Quran: A Physical and Technological Study." In The Aghlabids and Their Neighbors, edited by Glaire D. Anderson, Corisande Fenwick, and Miriam Rosser-Owen. Handbook of Oriental Studies: Section 1, The Near and Middle East: 122. Leiden: Brill.

Quandt, Abigail B. 1986. "The Conservation of a 12th Century Illuminated Manuscript on Vellum." The American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, Preprints of Papers Presented at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, 21-25 May 1986, 97–113.

Quandt, Abigail B. 2018. "The Purple Codices: A Report on Current and Future Research and Conservation Projects." Care and Conservation of Manuscripts 16: 121–52.

Rabitsch, Sophie, Inge Boesken Kanold, and Christa Hofmann. 2020. "Purple Dyeing of Parchment." In The Vienna Genesis, edited by Christa Hofmann, 1st ed. Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 71–102.

Smith, Jane, and Victoria Bunting. "A Study of Two Nineteenth Century Deluxe Edition Prints on Parchment." Papers Published at the Nineteenth Annual Student Conference of Art Conservation Training Programs. Buffalo, New York, 1993.

Trujillo, Frank. 2020. "The Black Hours at the Morgan Library & Museum." The Morgan Library & Museum. June 29, 2020.

Vnouček, Jiří. 2005. "The Manufacture of Parchment for Writing Purposes and the Observation of the Signs of Manufacture Surviving in Old Manuscripts." Care and Conservation of Manuscripts 8: 74–92.

Vnouček, Jiří. 2019. "The Parchment of the Codex Amiatinus in the Context of Manuscript Production in Northumbria Around the End of the Seventh Century: Identification of the Animal Species and Methods of Manufacture of the Parchment as Clues to the Old Narrative?" Journal of Paper Conservation 20 (1–4): 179–204.

Vnouček, Jiří. 2021. "Not All That Shines like Vellum Is Necessarily So." Care and Conservation of Manuscripts 17: 27–60.

Young. G. Loss of Infrared Linear Dichroism in Collagen Fibers as a Measure of Deterioration in Skin and Semi-Tanned Leather Artifacts, Material Issues in Art and Archeology III 267 (1992): 859-867.

Young, G. Microscopical Hydrothermal Stability Measurements of Skin and Semi-Tanned Leather, ICOM Preprints of the 9th Triennial Meeting, International Committee of Museums, Dresden 26-31, August 1990: 626-631.

Imaging Parchment

Chabries, Douglas M., Steven W. Booras, and Gregory H. Bearman. 2003. "Imaging the Past: Recent Applications of Multispectral Imaging Technology to Deciphering Manuscripts." Antiquity 77 (296): 359–72.

Cicero, Cristina, Fulvio Mercuri, Noemi Orazi, Ugo Zammit, Stefano Paoloni, and Massimo Marinelli. 2016. "Thermographic Analysis of Hidden Texts and Illuminated Manuscripts." Edited by M. J. Driscoll. Care and Conservation of Manuscripts 15: 69–78.

Douma, Michael, curator. 2008. "Pigments through the Ages." 2008.

Down, Jane L., Gregory S. Young, R. Scott Williams, and Maureen A. MacDonald. 2002. "Analysis of the Archimedes Palimpsest." Studies in Conservation 47 (sup3): 52–58.

Easton, R. L., K. T. Knox, and W. A. Christens-Barry. 2003. "Multispectral Imaging of the Archimedes Palimpsest." In 32nd Applied Imagery Pattern Recognition Workshop, 2003. Proceedings., 111–16. Washington, DC, USA: IEEE.

Edwards, H. G. M., D. W. Farwell, E. M. Newton, F. Rull Perez, and S. Jorge Villar. 2001. "Application of FT-Raman Spectroscopy to the Characterisation of Parchment and Vellum, I; Novel Information for Paleographic and Historiated Manuscript Studies." Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy 57 (6): 1223–34.

Edwards, Howell G.M., and Fernando Rull Perez. 2004. "Application of Fourier Transform Raman Spectroscopy to the Characterization of Parchment and Vellum. II, Effect of Biodeterioration and Chemical Deterioration on Spectral Interpretation." Journal of Raman Spectroscopy 35: 8–9.

Edwards, Gwenanne, and Mary Oey, eds. 2018. "Digital Imaging Workflow for Treatment Documentation." Library of Congress.

See also: https://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/ImageDoc/

Giacometti, Alejandro, Alberto Campagnolo, Lindsay Macdonald, Simon Mahony, Melissa Terras, Stuart Robson, Tim Weyrich, and Adam D. Gibson. 2012. "Cultural Heritage Destruction: Documenting Parchment Degradation via Multispectral Imaging." In Electronic Workshops in Computing, 301–8.

Giacometti, Alejandro, Alberto Campagnolo, Lindsay MacDonald, Simon Mahony, Stuart Robson, Tim Weyrich, Melissa Terras, and Adam Gibson. 2015. "The Value of Critical Destruction: Evaluating Multispectral Image Processing Methods for the Analysis of Primary Historical Texts." Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 32 (1): 101–22.

Gippert, Jost. 2007. "The Application of Multispectral Imaging in the Study of Caucasian Palimpsests." Bulletin of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences 175: 168–79.

Hofmann, Christa, ed. 2020. The Vienna Genesis. Material Analysis and Conservation of a Late Antique Illuminated Manuscript on Purple Parchment. Wien: Böhlau Verlag.

MacDonald, L. 2013. "Multispectral Imaging of Degraded Parchment." In Computational Color Imaging. CCIW 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, edited by S. Tominaga, R. Schettini, and A. Trémeau. Vol. 7786. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

Marengo, Emilio, Marcello Manfredi, Orfeo Zerbinati, Elisa Robotti, Eleonora Mazzucco, Fabio Gosetti, Greg Bearman, Fenella France, and Pnina Shor. 2011. "Technique Based on LED Multispectral Imaging and Multivariate Analysis for Monitoring the Conservation State of the Dead Sea Scrolls." Analytical Chemistry 83 (17): 6609–18.

Oprescu, Ashlyn, Orit Rosengarten, and Pnina Shor. 2018. "Multispectral Imaging and the Digitization of the Dead Sea Scrolls." Book and Paper Group Annual 37: 71–76.

Shor, Pnina, Marcello Manfredi, Greg H. Bearman, Emilio Marengo, Ken Boydston, and William A. Christens-Barry. 2014. "The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library." Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 2 (2): 71–89.

Tanner, Simon, and Greg Bearman. 2008. "Digitizing the Dead Sea Scrolls." Archiving, 119–23.

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History of This Page

This page was created in April 2022 when the Parchment page was updated.