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Paleography:
From the Greek palaiographia, meaning 'ancient writing', paleography is the study of scripts and their history.
Palette:
The range of colors in an artistic work.
Palimpsest:
From the Greek palimpsestos ('scraped again'), a palimpsest is reused writing support material from which the underlying text has been erased by using pumice or other scraping devices in the case of parchment. Erasure was not always complete and a concealed text can often be read under ultraviolet light.
Paraphs:
A flourish made after or below a signature.
Parchment:
The term is used generically to refer to animal skin prepared as a writing surface, although it is specifically applied to sheep and goat skin. To produce parchment, the animal skins were defleshed in a bath of lime, stretched on a frame, and scraped with a curved knife while damp. The skins are treated with pumice, and whitened with a substance such as chalk, and cut to size.
Pastedown:
A leaf pasted onto the inside of a board to hide the mechanics of binding such as channeling and pegging. Pastedowns are often formed from fragments of earlier manuscripts.
Patron:
The person responsible for commissioning a work. Portraits of patrons grew in popularity beginning in the fourteenth century.
Pegging:
The securing of cords to the boards of a binding with wooden dowels.
Pigment:
The coloring agent in paint. The paints used in illumination consist of vegetable, mineral, and animal extracts, ground and mixed with egg whites as a binding medium, with some glue and water added. Additives were used to modify color and texture including stale urine, honey, and ear wax; chalk, eggshell, or white lead were added to increase opacity. During the early Middle Ages, scribes or illuminators prepared their own pigments. With the growth of commercial production c. 1200, prepared ingredients could be purchased from a stationer or an apothecary.
Pricking:
The marking of a folio or bifolium by a pointed object to guide ruling. The term also refers to the marks produced. Pricking was generally carried out before the bifolia were folded.
Provenance:
Provenance is the history of a book's ownership. Provenance information can be found from evidence relating to the original commission, from additions and annotations including inscriptions and library labels, or from references in catalogs, correspondence, and other records.
Psalter:
The psalter is from the book of Psalms in the Bible. Psalters often contained additional texts such as the Hours of the Virgin, prayers, and creeds. From the ninth century on, the Psalms formed a major part of medieval prayer books. The psalter was the main devotional book before the book of hours in the thirteenth century.
Pumice:
Volcanic glass, used to scrape and prepare parchment.