the smell of parchment as an indicator of age

Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
It is said that English parchment has a smell of warm leather. Books produced before around 1850 have a very different smell from books that appeared after that date, whereas medieval manuscripts, created on animal skins, have a scent all their own. There is even a name for this smell – bibliosmia .Jan 1, 2022
 
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
then smelt of them

Are there other examples where manuscript experts used their sense of smell?

The Parchments of the Faith (1894)
George Edmonds Merrill
https://books.google.com/books?id=-kjQDm4oDBUC&pg=PA132
https://archive.org/details/parchmentsfaith01merrgoog/page/n144/mode/1up

Simonides next appeared at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England, and produced two or three genuine manuscripts of no very great value, and belonging to the tenth, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. He then unrolled with much apparent anxiety a few fragments of vellum, which bore an uncial text of most venerable appearance. The librarian carefully inspected the crumbling leaves of vellum, then smelt of them, and gave them back with the single remark that they dated from the middle of the nineteenth century I

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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
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