Elegant paper craft material—parchment paper

Ptolemy I of ancient Egypt (3rd century BC) used papyrus to produce a large number of books and established the largest library of Alexandria in the world at that time. The books in the library covered astronomy, history, science , literature, beliefs, customs and other fields. The king of the Kingdom of Pergamum (PERGAMUM, now Bergama, in present-day Turkey) in Anatolia (r. 197-159 BC) established a library with 200,000 volumes in order to compete with Egypt.

Egypt did not show weakness and stopped exporting papyrus to the emerging Kingdom of Pergamon. Without papyrus, it would be impossible to expand its great achievements. In desperation, the king ordered the development of new writing materials, and thus, parchment was born. Parchment is not only made of goatskin, but also cowhide and deerskin. Compared with papyrus, parchment is not only easier to write on, but also easier to preserve. It can also be used on both sides, and the writing content is twice that of papyrus. The advantage was far superior to that of papyrus. Until papermaking became popular in Europe, the doctrinal classics of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were all written on parchment. But parchment was too expensive after all. It was said that 500 sheep were needed to write a Bible. Therefore, after high-quality and cheap Chinese paper was introduced to Europe, parchment immediately withdrew from the stage of history.

But later, especially in modern times, people returned to parchment and used the texture of parchment to produce many paper crafts with exquisite craftsmanship and high artistic value.