-- -- -- -- --
-- -- -- -- --
 |
 |
A stylus like this one from a archological discovery in Bremen was used to write on a wax tablet. |
| |
 | |
A simple wax tablet from the Kölner Stadtmuseum (Cologne). |
ake a flat wooden board and carve a rectangular, shallow piece out of it on one side. Fill the hole you created with molten bee wax, flatten the wax as good as possible and let it solidify slowly. This could have been the instruction to build the medieval equivalent of the notebook: the wax tablet.
ax tablets have been found in various forms, ranging from simple on-sheet version consisting of a single slab of wood with waxen surface, up to ten or more page books, bound with leather or metal rings. The single "pages" however were usually rather small. Only few tablets found exceed a size of 10x20 cm.
archment was extremely expensive and paper was not yet known in Europe. An alternative was needed for things that needed to be written down, but was not meant to be kept for a long time. While it was possible (and frequently done) to scratch the ink from a sheet of parchment with a knife, ink itself was expensive. Thus most writing that was not intended to be kept for long, was done on wax tablets.
| |
 | |
A book of wax tablets shown in the Landesmuseum für Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte in Bremen, Germany. |
sing the wax tablets is quite easy: To write on them a wooden or sometimes metal stylus was used, carving the letters into the soft waxen surface. A stylus with a flat end could be used to erase smaller parts of the tablet or apply smaller corrections. To renew a complete wax tablet, it was held above a candle for a short time and then flattened with appropriate tools such as the side of a knife.
ax tablets were used for a number of purposes, including the obvious use as a notebook of sorts. Another popular use of wax tablets was for teaching writing in church schools. Any mistakes could be met with a reflattening of the page, instead of spoiling expensive parchment.
rcheological research has found wax tablets, that were obviously used to write down and record texts not meant to be erased after a couple of weeks. Such use, however, was rather the exception.