A parchment-seller’s shop, illustrated in a fifteenth-century
Italian chronicle. One man is trimming the sheets
into rectangles and the other is rubbing them down with chalk in preparation
for writing. The stock for sale on the shelves includes both rolls and
packets of ready-folded sheets
Bologna, University Library. Cod. Bonon. 963, f. 4. After
Christopher de Hamel, Medieval Craftsmen. Scribes and Illuminators
(London: British Museum Press, 1992), pic. 3, p. 9.