Traditional versus Modern Techniques

I have made a note here on what TRADITIONAL parchment craft is in relation to any system that uses a multi grid or template system. 

This is only to clear up any confusion. This is NOT meant for anyone to become offended by this information, as it is only for information purposes only.

TRADITIONAL parchment work has a history going back to the early 1400's for those who do not know that. It was specific to work done for Christenings and Baptisms, and it was mainly accomplished through perforating, piercing, and cutting techniques which is much similar to what we do today.

For those of us that do TRADITIONAL parchment work, we were taught to do every project from the ground up with techniques that made use of minimal tools,  without any substitutes that would create our fine-drawn outlines done with pen and ink, and also our perforation techniques done very carefully ONLY with the perforation tools and then cut away.

In learning the techniques by hand, fine motor skills were developed by each participant, and as the skills got better so did the designs for doing them become more complex.

These works of beauty challenged every one of us who do traditional work then, and they still do today. We had no multi grids, no templates to use until about 10 years ago. Even then they were used minimally within traditional work as they were created to help enhance our work. They did provide a platform for some quicker solutions to doing some finer work that would have been more difficult to accomplish with pen and ink in small detailed sections.

However, they did not replace the skills we had learned by hand. The current systems using templates have been able to bring new people to the interest of parchment work overall by offering them a quick and simplified system that bypasses tracing, outlining with pen and ink, and doing a lot of perforation work by hand. Experienced traditional people have found them useful and a lot of enjoyment, cutting down the time it takes to create an entire piece hand-done (with no grids or plates).

The difference to some people seems like there is no difference in the final product - you get a lovely piece no matter which way you wish to employ to be the final product.

Here is the difference; the PROCESS of creating a work with parchment by use of total skill-sets created by Hours and Hours of practice applied and honed over years is what TRADITIONAL work is about. It is NOT about the final outcome of the piece. It IS about HOW the process is done that got it (the final piece) there. And this is what traditional parchers wish to keep alive, and why this site exists which is to uphold those who have spent years honing hand-done techniques through the old-fashioned means of patience, perseverance, and a cry to high-end quality of a single piece of work, and a continued cultivation that continues to challenge one's experience by staying true to those methods of skill and application of them without need for anything except a lot of hard work.

On a final note, traditional parchment crafters see the work they do as akin to a highly valued jewel.

Every piece traditional parchers create begins as a diamond in the rough. They personally work that rough gem through hours of skill, shaping, polishing, shaping some more until they have finally created a thing of beauty.

Beverly Bunker .Artist . Academy /Pergamano tutor