Bibliomania: Ancient customized writing materials

In Nuce: Nerd Alert
Johann Eschenburg's book on classical trivia lifts the geek bar so high that I'm going to do a number of Nerd Alert's honoring him. Assuming Google's scheduling app is working correctly, we'll post great non-essential information from his Manual of Classical Literature  --this in addition to the awesome In Nuce posts scrounged from the works of other dead literary nerds. Life doesn't get much better.

But why wait? Let's start now: 

Ancient writers customized materials to suit their purposes.
Stone, brass, lead, wood and the like were employed, when the design was to record memorable events for posterity, or to promulgate public decrees or laws. For common and private purposes, the more usual materials were leaves, inner bark of trees, afterwards, parchment, wooden tablets simple or covered with wax, ivory, linen cloth, and Egyptian paper. The latter, formed from the fibers or bark of the papyrus, was, according to the opinion of some, first used in Greece in the time of Alexander the Great, but most probably earlier. There was also another variety of paper formed of the layers of inner bark, and another made from cotton. These two however were common only in the later ages. Still later was the invention of paper made from rags as at the present day, belonging perhaps to the middle of the 13th century...Skins of animals rudely prepared seem to have been used at an early period. Parchment was first prepared at Pergamos, whence its name. 
The laws of Solon were inscribed on tablets of wood, which are said to have been of a pyramidal shape, and so fixed as to turn on a pivot or axis.
Writing instruments:
The usual instrument for writing on the harder materials, and also on the tablets covered wax, was the style. This was pointed at one end, and broad at the other for the purpose of erasing letters and smoothing the surface of the wax if a mistake were made, or the writer for any reason wished an alteration. It was usually made of iron, sometimes of ivory. For drawing the letters with colors or some sort of ink, sometimes a pencil was employed, but more commonly a reed. The reed or cane chiefly used was that from Egypt or Cnidus. It was sharpened and split for the purpose, like [a quill pen], which was not known to the ancients, the beginning of the 7th century being the earliest period of its use.

The pencil was properly an instrument for painting. Its invention is ascribed to Apollodorus, an Athenian painter, 408 B. C.
The ink was commonly black, and was prepared, according to Pliny* and Vitruvius, from soot and gum. In the middle ages, red ink was much used, particularly for initial letters, signatures, borderings and ornaments. A superior, very brilliant kind, called encaustum, was used in the signatures to the public documents of the Greek Emperors. Among the ancients the titles of books and sometimes of particular sections were written in red (rubrica); hence the word rubrick. The practice of adorning the large initials with gold, silver, and images, and of writing upon purple or violet colored parchment with letters of gold or silver, seems to have commenced in the later ages. With the ancients, however, it was customary to polish the parchment or paper with pumice-stone, and for the sake of durability as well as fragrance, to spread over it the oil of cedar (Hor. Art. Poet. 331. Plin. 1. xvi. c. 39).
*the Elder?

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