Vellum

Vellum (pronounced vel-uh m)

(1) A fine parchment, prepared from calfskin, lambskin, kidskin etc, treated for use as a writing surface.

(2) A manuscript or the like on vellum.

(3) A texture of paper or cloth resembling vellum.

(4) A creamy colored heavy paper resembling vellum.

(5) Made of or resembling vellum (vellum sometime used by commercial stationery suppliers to refer to paper of the highest quality).

(6) Of a book, a work bound in vellum.

1400–1450: From the late Middle English velum, from velim, from the thirteenth century Old French velin (parchment made from calfskin (which endures in modern French as vélin), from the Middle French veelin & velin (of a calf), from vel (calf) & veel (veal), from the Latin vitulinus (of a calf).  The related word in English was bookfell (a skin prepared for writing upon; a sheet of vellum or parchment; paper), from the Middle English bocfel (parchment), from the Old English bōcfell (parchment, vellum).  It was cognate with the Old High German buohfel & puohfell (parchment), the Middle High German buohvël (parchment) and the Old Norse bókfell (parchment).  The noun plural is vellums.

Vellum sheets being prepared.

It’s now probably only specialists who use the word vellum to refer to the material in its historic sense.  The most frequent use of the word is to describe either (1) a prepared (non-calf) animal skin or membrane (usually in pre-cut form for printing and often referred to also as parchment in its generic sense) or (2) any of the various high-quality editions of paper stock offered by many manufacturers.  In the narrow technical sense “true” vellum is (3) made from calfskin and available usually in single sheets which may be used individually (typically as scrolls) or assembled as bound folios, volumes or codices.  However, such is the quality of the modern, non-calf, parchments that only experts can tell the difference and in academic use, the term "membrane" (which means something very different to engineers and others) is now often preferred because even if it’s not exactly correct, nor can it ever be said to be wrong.  Finally, there is (4) "paper vellum" which is created using either plasticized rag cotton or cellulose fibres harvested from plant or trees.  Vellum paper has become popular for formal or ceremonial documents such as invitations because the lighter versions are translucent with a finish like frosted glass.  Despite its smooth feel, vellum paper does not contain plastic and is quite durable (though with nothing like the longevity of “true” vellum) and versatile in that it can in some cases be printed on with laser and inkjet printers.

Vellum scrolls stored in the UK parliament.

There was a perception that the Acts of the UK parliament had for hundreds of years been printed on vellum scrolls but the practice is of comparatively recent origin, begun only in 1849; prior to that they were handwritten on parchment rolls which were made usually from goatskin.  The innovation of printing record copies of public Acts on vellum was adopted following recommendations made by the Select Committee on Printing in 1848, and a 1849 report by the then Clerk Assistant of the House of Lords.  The resolutions abolished the practice of ingrossing (handwriting) record copies of Acts and inrolling them in parchment rolls containing all public Acts passed in a Parliamentary session.  Record copies of public Acts were henceforth printed in book form, on vellum while private Acts were printed on vellum between 1849-1956, since when they have been printed on archival paper.

Rendering of Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap by lemgras330, colored pencil on Bristol Vellum paper, June 2016.

In 1999 proposals to print record copies of public Acts on archival paper were considered.  The House of Lords approved a proposal to change to printing on archival paper, but the House of Commons voted against, noting claims that archival paper was of suitable quality and much cheaper but arguing against the change because of tradition, the superior durability of vellum and the threat to the viability of the UK’s last remaining printer of vellum.  It was one of the less dramatic and acrimonious disputes between the Commons and Lords but it nevertheless dragged on for almost two decades, their lordships never retreating from their view that “…printing on archival paper is a more appropriate use of public funds, and that the case for continuing to print on vellum is not made”.  Not wishing to appear obstructive, it was added that if “…the Commons wished to arrange a contract for printing record copies of Acts on vellum, then the Lords would share experience of managing the legacy contract to assist with this”.  Their last word however was that the House of Lords “…does not wish to contribute financially to any future printing on vellum”.  In a typically English way, the Commons found a compromise, agreeing to provide front and back vellum covers for record copies of Acts which the House of Lords would continue to print on archive paper.  Honor seemed to be satisfied on both sides and another constitutional crisis was averted.

The Brudenell Magna Carta, document on vellum, dated 12 October 1297.

Outside of the parliament however, there were some not convinced the Lords had gone far enough and them storage of the country’s laws on the skins of dead animals should give way to digital storage.  Obvious though it may seem to the Instagram generation for whom archival documents in physical form are rare, it may not be as simple as it seems.  Parchment does last a long time, the UK’s oldest extant law can still be found on a document dating from 1497 and while ordinary paper can deteriorate rapidly, vellum if carefully stored will endure for millennia and original copies for the Magna Carta, signed more than 800 years ago on vellum, still exist.

Victoria Tower, Palace of Westminster, London.

Many actually still exist, the parliamentary archives a collection of some five miles (8 km) of physical parchment, paper and photographs in the Victoria Tower which rises 325 feet (99 m) at the western edge of the Palace of Westminster.  In the tower, scrolls of vellum are piled up in a vast repository, spooled in a range of different sizes, looking much as they would have done hundreds of years ago.  Digital archiving obviously has no such history but the issues of long-term storage are, even after only a few decades of accumulation, well understood.  The advantages of digitization are ease of creation, economy of storage (especially in something as text-orientated as acts of parliament) and simplicity of replication.  However, although often referred to as “weightless”, digital storage inherently needs physical objects: disks (or discs), tapes or other media and an infrastructure of devices is also required for the archives to be read.  This has been a troublesome aspect to many with old archival material on electronic media which may still be usable but, if held on some rare and long obsolete specification of diskette or tape cartridge, may be effectively inaccessible.  The issue is not insurmountable and needs only a protocol under which material is moved from one media to another as technology changes but it’s still a more labour-intensive process (and one with much scope for error) than leaving a vellum scroll sitting of a shelf for centuries.

Limn

Limn (pronounced lim)

(1) To represent in drawing or painting; to delineate (rare except as literary device and also used figuratively).

(2) To portray in words; to describe (rare except as literary device).

(3) To illuminate (in the archaic sense) manuscripts; to decorate with gold or some other bright colour (obsolete except in historic references)

1400–1450: From the late Middle English limnen, limyne, lymm, lymn & lymne (to illuminate (a manuscript)), a variant of the Middle English luminen (to illuminate (a manuscript)), a short-form variant of enluminen or enlumine (to shed light upon, illuminate; to enlighten; to make bright or clear; to give colour to; to illuminate (a manuscript); to depict, describe; to adorn or embellish with figures of speech or poetry; to make famous, glorious, or illustrious), from the Old & Middle French enluminer (to illumine (a manuscript)), from the Latin illūminō (to brighten, light up; to adorn; to make conspicuous), the construct being il- (a variant of in- (the prefix used in the sense of “in, inside”)) + lūminō (to brighten, illuminate; to reveal), the construct being from lūmen (genitive luminis) (radiant energy; light; (and used poetically) brightness”) (from the primitive Indo-European lewk- (bright; to shine; to see)) + -ō (the suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs).  The more familiar derived form in Latin was inlūmināre (to embellish; to brighten (literally “light up”), related obviously to related to lucere (to shine), the idea identifiable in the Modern English lustre.

Limn’s figurative sense of “portray, depict” which persists in literary and poetic use (some journalists also like the archaic flourish) was in use by the 1590s.  The derived forms include the verbs dislimn, dislimns, dislimning & dislimned (to remove the outlines of; to efface); enlimn enlimns, enlimning & enlimned) (to adorn (a book, manuscript etc) by illuminating or ornamenting with coloured and decorated letters and figures, the adjective unlimned (not limned or depicted), outlimn (to sketch out or delineate) and the noun limner (plural limners) (one who limns or portrays.  The use of limning as a noun described a depiction (the definitional boundaries of which shifted over the centuries).  The spelling limne was (obsolete) by the seventeenth century.  Limn & limned are verbs, limner is a noun & limming is a noun & verb; the two nouns plural are limners & limnings.

Two limnings in miniature from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. 

In the popular imagination, the illuminate manuscript is one where the art has a quality of vibrancy, the colors vivid, typified by Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (The Very Rich Hours of the Duke of Berry) (1413-1416) by Dutch miniature painters, the brothers Herman, Paul, and Jean de Limbourg from the city of Nijmegen.  The volume is now in the collections of the Musée Condé in the Château de Chantilly, Chantilly, France.  January (left) and September (right) were two of a number of illustrations in a seasonal theme and as well as of interest to historians of art, the depictions have been used as documentary evidence of aspects of lifestyle as varied as the place of animals in society to the colors of garments.  In the tradition of the International Gothic of fourteenth & fifteenth centuries (the successor epoch to the High Gothic) the book is noted for its detail, refinement and use of gold leaf though quite how reliable as a historic record such documents are has been questioned; while not exactly the Instagram of the age, they were certainly idealized and produced for whomever it was prepared to pay for the commission.

Limnophile Lindsay Lohan lingers to look with longing at a lake's languid waters, Georgia Rule (2007).

Limno- is a word-forming element used in science in the sense of “of or pertaining to lakes and fresh water; the study of bodies of fresh water” and dates from 1892 when the name for the discipline appeared in scientific papers, the first to use the term apparently the Swiss geologist François-Alphonse Forel (1841-1912).  The related forms are limnological, limnetic, limnophile (there seem not to be any limnophobes), limnologist and the marvellous adjective limnophilous (loving or having an affinity towards lakes).  The noun limnology does not describe the study of illuminated manuscripts and despite the spelling is unrelated, the construct being limno-, from the Ancient Greek λίμνη (límnē) (pool of standing water, tidal pool, pond, marsh, lake," a word of uncertain origin but perhaps connected to the Latin limus (mud), from the primitive Indo-European root slei & lei- (slime), via the notion of “moistness, standing water), from or closely related to λιμήν (limḗn) (harbor) & λειμών (leimṓn) (moist place, meadow) +‎ -(o)logy.  The suffix -ology was formed from -o- (as an interconsonantal vowel) +‎ -logy.  The origin in English of the -logy suffix lies with loanwords from the Ancient Greek, usually via Latin and French, where the suffix (-λογία) is an integral part of the word loaned (eg astrology from astrologia) since the sixteenth century.  French picked up -logie from the Latin -logia, from the Ancient Greek -λογία (-logía).  Within Greek, the suffix is an -ία (-ía) abstract from λόγος (lógos) (account, explanation, narrative), and that a verbal noun from λέγω (légō) (I say, speak, converse, tell a story).  In English the suffix became extraordinarily productive, used notably to form names of sciences or disciplines of study, analogous to the names traditionally borrowed from the Latin (eg astrology from astrologia; geology from geologia) and by the late eighteenth century, the practice (despite the disapproval of the pedants) extended to terms with no connection to Greek or Latin such as those building on French or German bases (eg insectology (1766) after the French insectologie; terminology (1801) after the German Terminologie).  Within a few decades of the intrusion of modern languages, combinations emerged using English terms (eg undergroundology (1820); hatology (1837)).  In this evolution, the development may be though similar to the latter-day proliferation of “-isms” (fascism; feminism et al).

Two folio pages from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. 

Intriguingly different from most in the genre is the Black Hours Manuscript (known also as the Morgan Black Hours), created between 1460-1480 (some sources claim the final artwork was completed by 1475) in Bruges in what is now the Flemish Region of Belgium.  Created probably for a patron or member of the Burgundian Court, it’s now held in Manhattan’s Morgan Library and Museum.  What is most striking about the Black Hours is the extensive use of dark blueish hues as the predominant background shading.  Highly unusual in any artistic form in this era, the color occurs because of the extremely corrosive process used to dye the vellum with iron gall ink.  The black pages are a rarity (and at the time an expensive one) and the miniatures all use tones, the palette throughout very limited and restricted to blue, old rose, green, gray and white, with a few touches of gold, a radical departure from the usual splashes of yellow and scarlet, the margins decorated with blue borders, gold acanthus leaves and the expected drolleries.  So distinctive are the stylistic elements that historians of art continue to debate the influences on the creators and traces of its motifs appear often in modern graphic art.

Miniature

Miniature (pronounced min-ee-uh-cher, min-ee-choor or min-uh-cher)

(1) A representation or image of something on a small or reduced scale.

(2) A greatly reduced or abridged form or copy.

(3) A very small painting, especially a portrait, showing fine detail on ivory or vellum.

(4) The art of executing such a painting.

(5) Historically, an illuminated letter or other decoration in a manuscript.

(6) In packaged alcoholic drinks, the small (usually 50 ml) bottles of spirits typically used in hotel mini-bars.

(7) Being, on, or represented on a small scale; reduced.

(8) In military dress, small versions of medals and decorations, worn on certain social occasions.

1580–1590: From the Italian miniatura (miniature painting), from the Medieval Latin miniātūra, the construct being miniāt(us) + -ūra (-ure) (From –u(s) (the suffix forming passive perfect participles) +‎ -ra (the nominal suffix).  Miniature is a noun, verb & adjective and miniaturization is a noun; the noun plural is miniatures.

Words undergo shifts in meanings or gain new senses which operate in parallel for a number of reasons including popular use, technological change, foreign influences and mistakes.  The modern meaning of “miniature” (a small version of something) arose because of a misunderstanding by medieval scholars who conflated miniāre (to paint red, (in illuminating manuscripts)) (from minium (the fiery red pigment used during the Middle Ages to ornament manuscripts)) with the Latin minimus (small (and in the strict technical sense used in Latin “not less or little but least”)).  Had the scholars of a few centuries ago got it right then miniature would have meant “an illuminated text”.  Long before there were printing presses, a trained elite worked as scribes, laboriously writing out by hand the books, scrolls and other manuscripts which were the preserve of the church, the rich and the relative few others who were literate.  In the west (things were a little more advanced in the Far East), literally whatever was printed on some form of parchment was the work of human hands and the slight variation in the style between one page and the next can be used to work out where the efforts of one scribe stopped and another began.

Illuminated manuscripts.

The process was to press a pigmented point against the surface which left the marks forming the letters and this was usually done in black but to enliven things, some characters or shapes were formed in red, often for titles, the large initial letters which marked the start of a paragraph (a tradition which persists to this day although the use of color is now rare) or the decorative drawings which usually in some way related to the subject of the text.  The Latin name for the red pigment (made either from cinnabar or red lead) was minium, and the corresponding verb meaning “to color with minium” was miniāre.

Lindsay Lohan in miniature: My Scene Goes Hollywood Lindsay Lohan Doll Gift Set by Mattel (autographed by the subject).

For the scholars who created the basis of the early Italian language, the connection between the decorative drawings rendered in red with miniare was so persuasive that miniare came to mean “to decorate a manuscript with a small drawing”.  A noun form of the word (miniatura) referred to the art of illuminating (ie adding illustrations) and in time this lost any hint of the use of a red pigment; it came to be applied whatever the color.  Because the “illuminations” (as the illustrations in manuscripts were called) were small compared with most drawings & paintings, miniatura came to be used to describe any small portrait or painting and, in the way language picked up figurative forms, eventually to anything very small. In English, “miniature” in that sense had been adopted by the late sixteenth century.

A 700 ml bottle of Gin might sell for US40 in a liquor store (US$2.85 per 50 ml) while a hotel might charge US$25 for the 50 ml miniature in a mini-bar (US$350 per 700 ml).  Sill, sometimes one really wants a G&T.

The concept of the miniature is well understood but the use is nuanced.  We have for decades lived in the age of miniaturization (now done at the atomic level) but the term “miniature” really makes sense only at the human scale.  In the military there are miniatures (which are scaled-down versions of decorations worn at certain social functions) and in a hotel mini-bar (a few still exist and they can be tempting if paying the high prices with OPM (other people’s money)) a 50 ml bottle of gin is a miniature, a small-scale rendition of the more familiar 700 or 1125 ml containers.  Both those examples are small versions of something larger but the most obvious instances of modern miniaturization are in electronics but nobody calls a smaller version of an integrated circuit a “miniature” even if both are structurally identical, differing only in scale.  So, the essence of the miniature is not merely that it’s minute, microscopic, diminutive, tiny or minuscule but that it is recognizably a smaller version of something which is familiar in a larger form.  In English, words in the vein of “miniature” actually have a tangled history.  Although it’s now close to extinct, “minify” was once a favorite among those too fastidious to tolerate the improper use of “minimize”.  Minify (the third-person singular simple present tense was minifies, the present participle minifying and the simple past and past participle minified) was a nineteenth century back-formation from magnify, creating its exact opposite.  There was also minish but all sources list it as archaic (although the popularity of diminish remains undiminished).

Small but not a “miniature”: Evening train to Hawthorn (circa 1889) by Tom Roberts (1856-1931) of the Heidelberg School.

In art history, the term “miniature” is specifically applied and not necessarily to all small paintings.  In August 1899, a number of artists of the Heidelberg School staged the 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition in Melbourne, Australia, the name a reference to most of the 183 works on display being painted on the cedar wood lids of cigar-boxes, all measuring 9 x 5 inches (229 x 127 mm).  The choice of medium was not an artistic device but reflected the impoverished artists’ need for an alternative to expensive canvas, most of the lids obtained for free from a tobacconist shop run by a family member.  The works were thus not “miniatures” in the accepted sense of the artistic tradition, even though they conformed with the structural definition and one criticism at the time was they resembled the small preliminary sketches artists would often make before commencing a larger work in the same style; interesting perhaps to academics and critics but hardly suitable for exhibition.  The size of the lids was actually not significant and had they been somewhat smaller or larger the art would have been much the same and the Heidelberg School’s particular impressionist technique was quite distinct from the broken colour technique of the French and it became the style of landscape painting that would for decades be the dominant form in Australia.  Controversial at the time, the 9 x 5s actually sold well, the public reacting more favorably than the critics, still not ready for the “shocks of the new” which awaited them in the new century and the surviving 9 x 5s now sell for up to Aus$1 million.

A seventeenth century miniature of the Italian School, oil painting on hard stone with a carved, golden frame (80 x 90 mm (3.14 x 3.54 inches).