(20-04-2026, 04:07 PM)Koen G wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Regarding flawed parchment, there are indeed many instances: think of the famous holes and their creative repairs. Top-of-the-line skins shouldn't have (or easily get) holes in them. But could we really say that bad parchment was exclusively used by isolated communities? This sounds like there wouldn't be any lower-tier parchment available in urban environments. But shouldn't we expected writing substrates to be available in different qualities, just like any other commodity?Yes, I think this is worth researching.
But as I said, the issue is that as soon as paper made from rags became widely available (which varied by region), it was of better quality and significantly cheaper than bad parchment and easier to work with. So what was the market for bad parchment in the early-mid 15th century? Legal documents were often required to be written on parchment but sheep was preferred because it made it hard to hide erasures. Calf parchment had the highest status. This may be the reason the VM was made on this sort of parchment instead of paper or goat / sheep skin. Because the author wanted to for personal reasons. Or we are looking at a place / time where paper or goat parchment was not available or affordable but I find that less likely.
Another thing I'd like to point out - if the author was so poor, why did he fill the manuscript with huge illustrations? Cheap manuscripts had no illustrations at all to save cost of material and labor. He could easily have compressed the text on half the parchment with smaller or less imagery. But he didn't. On the contrary, the images are disproportionally large and numerous. Either their function was crucial (which I doubt), or cost of parchment was not an issue.