Storehouses of parchment

[-JKP-]

Sure, but that is why my main question was whether you ever found any reference to any storage (medium- to long-term).

I have seen many references to large projects, where 50 or even 200 manuscripts were commissioned in order to build a library (apparently by commissioners with deep pockets). I've also seen numerous estimates of how many skins this would require.

But I have never seen any information on how long it was stored. It might be days, weeks, or months. I don't know. I have seen archaeological mentions that parchment and quills were vulnerable to rats.

As mentioned in my first post, if the patron was sometimes expected to bring the writing medium, it suggests the scribes did not have a storehouse.




From a practical standpoint, it seems to me that you could fill a page with text faster than you could produce the parchment on which to write it. There are also many documents written on fragments. It's possible that the demand was greater than the supply, in which case very little would have been stored for any length of time.


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For interest's sake, here is an illustration of a parchmenter's shop. Assuming it is accurate, it shows how they bundled the skins, in blocks and rolls. I don't know how they calculated the amount to put in a bundle (or whether they were willing to break up the bundles into smaller lots):

Source: Bologna, University Library. Cod. Bonon. 963
Source: Hamburg Bible