304 PAINTING MATERIALS
the catalogue of Winsor and Newton for 1870. Ivory palette knives or spatulas
are still available but are now little used.
Pantograph. Operating on a kind of steelyard relation of scale, this is an instru-
ment by means of which copies in larger or smaller size can be made by a process of
tracing over the work to be copied (figure 18). The usual construction is of four
strips of wood set as overlapping sides of a square, the position of which, from the
worker, is with one corner towards the bottom of the page. A downward projection
of the upper left strip is fixed in place, the lower corner of the square is moved
over the work to be copied, and a downward projection of the upper right strip
marks the enlarged copy. The scale of the enlargement can be changed by adjust-
ing the relations of the overlapping strips. The pantograph does not appear among
the catalogues of Winsor and Newton, artists* colormen, until the year 1892, and
has not been found in other catalogues before that. Its age, however, is much
greater than this. Meder (pp. 189-190) says that it was described by Scheiner in
1635.
Pea. In present-day usage, this word has been attached almost entirely to a
metal instrument for writing or drawing that has been developed largely since the
middle of the XVIII century. Recent usage, however, has not yet established itself
in the history of art, particularly of writing and illuminating, where the word refers
principally to the pen made of a quill, though it may also have to do with a reed or
with a metal slip. Very possibly, the reed has the greatest antiquity, the hollow
joints of bamboo or tubular stock of coarse marsh grass (calamus) having been
used by Greek and Near Eastern writers from Roman times. And the reed or
cane pen is probably the most easily made (figure 19). According to the descrip-
tion given by Johnston (pp. 51-54), it should be cut from a stalk about 8 inches
long, one end of which is tapered obliquely and shaved back to the hard, outer
shell The nib or writing edge is then cut across squarely and is slitted longitudi-
nally for about f inch. To retain ink in the pen a thin strip of metal the width of
the nib and about 2 inches long is bent into the reed in an S-shape and sprung up
under the nib. Besides its use in the classical world, the reed pen undoubtedly
had a common employment, particularly for large writing, throughout the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance. It was known in Egypt. In a bronze pen case from
Oxyrhynchus, thought to be of Roman times and now in the British Museum, are
two reed pens cut in the way just described. In the Far East a number of examples
from the III to the IX century was found at Niya, at Lou-Lan, at Mlran in the
Tarlm Basin, and at Tun Huang. The pens found at Mlran were accompanied by
written records and were of wood and of reed; those from Tun Huang were
roughly cut from the twigs of tamerisk. Although they are little used today, reeds
ready cut are available from a few artists' colormen. They are of bamboo or
what is called * Indian reed/
The common pen, however, from classical times until very recently has been
the quill. Although one of the earliest specific allusions to the quill is said to have