Abstract
We report a simple histological study on skin biopsies from young domestic sheep following each step in transformation from skin to parchment production. During the recreation of historical parchment manufacture, histological analyses were conducted; before and after lime treatment, hair removal, and stretching. Sections were fixed and stained using a variety of histological stains to identify the presence of different molecular classes and the fibrous proteins, collagen and elastin. The results reveal surprisingly few histological changes in most steps in the production process. However, very visible changes in the supramolecular ordering of skin macromolecules (elastin, collagen) occur during the final stage of parchment production when stretched on the frame. Collagen fibres and hair follicles were all strongly re-oriented in the direction of strain. Surprisingly despite the thinness of the lambskin and the exhaustive treatment in lime, not all fats were saponified and even in the final product Oil Red O stained fat bodies were detectable on the hair side of the skin. We believe this study will help compensate for the lack of sources on microscopic changes in parchment during the recreation of its historical manufacture.
Highlights
Studies on the histology of animal skins have mainly focused on living animals, exploring pathology [1, 2], differences between species [3, 4] or breeds [5, 6], structural features [5, 7] or specific constituents [1, 8]
Belgium Full list of author information is available at the end of the article paper we explore the histological changes that occur to fresh sheep skins during the different stages employed in parchment production
From a histological point of view, samples taken from the four skins shared similar changes during parchment production, there were no significant differences between stillborn and two-weeks old animals
Summary
Studies on the histology of animal skins have mainly focused on living animals, exploring pathology [1, 2], differences between species [3, 4] or breeds [5, 6], structural features [5, 7] or specific constituents [1, 8]. By documenting how each stage is processed and by taking successive samples it will be possible to correlate with the non-invasive procedures currently used to decipher the production of parchment (SEM, XRF, Raman, etc.) from unknown historic production methods. The resulting data from experimental manufacture can be compared with non-invasive methods applied to historical material [15, 20, 21], as it was in a recent article [22] in which the Fourneau et al Herit Sci (2020) 8:78 authors conclude that “the skin studied was first tawed with alum and dressed with gypsum”
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