Thursday 23 April 2015

PARCHMENT STORE DAY 2015: REPORT



As anyone who visited an independent parchment store last Saturday can attest, Parchment Store Day 2015 was a resounding success. 1,500% more parchment was sold than on the previous Saturday and Parchment Store Day 2015 had a 24.3% increase in bound parchment sales and a 97.2% increase in single-sheet parchment sales from PSD 2014. And while some have accused the day of being a bad thing for parchment merchants, it definitely brought a lot of people to independent parchment stalls.

Parchment Store Day was founded several decades ago in resistance to the decline in independent parchment shops and the lamentable rise of WH Smith’s user-friendly A4 Plain Paper Refill Pad.

As is traditional, a number of parchments were created specifically for Parchment Store Day, including exclusive parchments from the likes of Foo Fighters, David Bowie and Ludolph of Saxony (c. 1295-1378).

Unfortunately, some of the rarer Parchment Store Day manuscripts have already appeared for re-sale down the marketplace.