Vellum

Vellum, skin stretched and polished to a smooth whiteness, has long served as a noble material for bookbinding, whether in the form of limp vellum in the old style or stiff vellum enhanced with gilt tooling. Its distinctive texture, its resistance to the passage of time, and the patina it acquires set these bindings apart, sought after as much for their understated elegance as for the rarity of the copies so bound.