The Vellum

"Chaucer the Goat"--so named by the class--came from Jesse Meyer at Pergamena Handmade Parchment <<www.pergamena.net>>  Calfskin, sheepskin, and deerskin were also available, but goatskin was more affordable and suited our purposes just fine.  The goatskin below, prepared on both sides for writing, cost about $108 in 2006.  It arrived rolled up like a poster, hence the bookends to flatten it out.  After being squared up and equally divided, the goatskin resulted in four quires of four folios each, for a total of 32 "pages."  Each group folded its 1/4 of the goatskin vellum twice, resulting in a kind of "quarto" measuring 5 inches wide and 8 inches tall.  This very natural mathematical division of the goatskin furnished a lesson in and of itself: the shape of the modern book--which we tend to take for granted--is largely determined by the shape of a full goat- or sheep-skin.