A single 150-page book required the skins of 12 sheep to make the parchment. That much parchment wasn’t cheap — the parchment on which a book was written cost far more than the actual writing. With that much cost sunk in the materials, it’s no wonder that book-buyers wanted beautiful, handwritten script — it added relatively little to the cost.
It was paper which changed all that. European paper production didn’t get properly underway until the 1300’s. Once it did, book prices plummeted, writing became the primary expense of book production, and printing presses with movable type followed a century later.
Do you know what changed that caused paper production to be viable?
Do you know what changed that caused paper production to be viable?
How far back can we follow the chain?