VELLUM

A friend and I have had a go at making goat vellum (parchment), using essentially traditional methods (if you don't count stapling it to white-painted plywood to stretch it :-) ). After it's dry, I finish it with a scraper, pumice, and fine sandpaper. It's quite fine and flexible, about the thickness of 80-120gsm paper. Both the hair and flesh sides have a suede-like texture, similar to the genuine medieval vellum I have handled, and it is excellent for both writing and painting. 

We are pricing it at $25 AUD per square foot, which is roughly $225 AUD per square metre.  A whole hide is typically 3.4-4.5 square feet. We can provide small samples which will give a good idea of the thickness and finish, though not necessarily the colour of any given piece.  E-mail us for details.

Here is a sample of some calligraphy and illumination I did on a waste scrap to see how well it all worked. The image is real-size, 7 x 5 cm (the big picture is x3).  It's on a dark bit of reject vellum, but shows there's no bleeding of the ink, and the paint works fine.  Carbon-black ink, Reeves gouache, gold paint.

At the moment we have seven pieces available.  All pieces are rectangular, varying by no more than a few millimetres in dimension;  any distortions are due to my photography.  Measurements are taken across the centre lines.  Everything is also rather flatter than it looks in the pictures.  Click on the images for larger views.