Parchment making in eighteenth-century France: historical practices and the written record

Abstract

Abstract Documentation of industrial arts within dictionaries, encyclopaedias and treatises has recorded parchment-making practices observed in eighteenth-century France. If understood within the context in which they were produced, the accounts in the treatises of Lalande and the Encyclopedie of Diderot and d'Alembert have the potential to contribute substantially to knowledge of historical practice. Significant information may also be found in the Dictionnaire universel de commerce of Savary des Brulons and the treatise of Dessables. Together, these texts provide a clear description of parchment-making techniques at a time when trade practices were standardized but had not yet been modernized through industrialization. Comparative examination of the instructions for each stage of production offers a detailed account of how practitioners may have carried out these activities. Such investigation is particularly informative when these stages are also considered within the continuum of ancient, medieval and...