Before the common use of paper as a writing
surface, indigenous peoples of the world recorded
information on genealogy, religion, divination, and
government on many different natural substances such as
rocks, leaves, and fabric. Long strips of tree bark,
sometimes as long as thirty feet, were also used to record
information. The first record of paper is in China circa 105
AD. However, recent archaeological investigations place the
actual invention of papermaking some 200 years earlier.
"Early Chinese paper appears to have
been made by from a suspension of hemp waste in
water, washed, soaked, and beaten to a pulp with a
wooden mallet. A paper mold, probably a sieve of
coarsely woven cloth stretched in a four-sided
bamboo frame, was used to dip up the fiber slurry
from the vat and hold it for drying. Eventually,
tree bark, bamboo, and other plant fibers were used
in addition to hemp". (IPST website)
It took nearly 500 years for papermaking to
travel from Asia to Europe, by way of what’s modernly
referred to as the Middle East. Many Chinese papermaking
materials, such as rice and bamboo, were not available to
Middle Eastern papermakers, who substituted flax and other
plant fibers instead. They also developed a human-powered
trip-hammer to save time in preparing the pulp. The first
European papers were made from linen or hemp rags, or from
the more tarry hemp of ropes and sails.
Although the export of paper from the Middle
East to Byzantium and other parts of Europe began in the
10th and 11th centuries, the craft was apparently not
established in Spain and Italy until the 12th century. The
earliest extant European document is a deed of King Roger of
Sicily of 1102, and England’s earliest is a document of 1309
from the Hastings Court of Lyme Regis, on what is probably
Spanish paper. Early paper was disfavored by the Christian
world as a manifestation of Moslem culture at first. Paper
was so out of favor (being a product of Godless heathens)
that, in 1221 the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II declared
all official documents written on paper to be invalid. It is
possible that this decision was made under the influence of
wealthy sheep and cattle merchants, who feared losing the
income from their parchment trading.
Paper and its predecessor parchment were in
use concurrently in Europe for some centuries before paper
became the standard writing material. Poor quality writing
and wrapping papers were commonly in use but, by their very
nature, have rarely survived. General use of paper for
writing and printing came about as a result of advances in
printing technology, greater literacy, and the economics of
supply and demand. Towards the end of the medieval period
manuscripts were also produced on paper, and it is the
medium of fully one third of the surviving manuscripts of
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. By the thirteenth century paper
was available for use in book production. Although it is
considerably less durable than natural parchment, paper had,
and still has today, one great advantage: it’s enormously
more cost effective. By the fourteenth century, a variety of
papers were readily available to anyone who needed them for
a reasonable price.
The following table roughly charts the
spread of the manufacture of paper from country to country
in medieval Europe from thereon by the dates of the earliest
known papermills, although it should be noted that the use
of paper in a country may predate manufacture by 2-300
years.
The Process of Papermaking has changed
little since the earliest batches were made.
Preparing the stock, forming the paper web, drying the
sheet, and applying coatings and additives were all as much
a part of the medieval paper maker’s job as they are of the
work in modern paper mills. Work at the paper vat normally
involved four people: the vatman, who made the sheet using a
mould; the couch squirt working in time with the vatman,
placing the sheet on felt; the layman, who drew off the
still moist sheets from the felt after pressing; and the
apprentice, who had to feed material to the vat and provide
for vat heating. The press was operated jointly by this
team. Depending on format and basis weight, up to nine reams
(4,500 sheets) of paper were made in the course of a working
day averaging 13 hours.
The material of choice for the European
papermaker was cotton or linen fiber from rags. The rags
were sorted, cleaned, and heated in an alkali solution,
first in an open vat and the later under the steam pressure
of a closed lid. After draining and aging, the rags were
then washed and beaten to a fine pulp. In order to retain a
long fiber, it was necessary to make sure that the rags were
shred using a dull blade and cut very slowly. It would take
a weeks time to prepare the pulp used in the finest papers.
If a pristine white paper was wanted the pulp was then
bleached to remove the final traces of dyes and the residual
darkening from the cooking process, it was however just as
common to find unbleached paper.
A paper mold is a sort of frame consisting
of four raised edges with a fine wire screen covering the
bottom. To form a sheet of paper, the papermaker dipped a
paper mold into the vat of stock and lifted it out
horizontally, trapping the fibers against the screen of the
mold.
After forming, the sheet was "couched" from
the mold and placed on felts or woolen cloth for pressing. A
stack of paper sheets and felts, was then placed in a large
wooden screw press, and all the workers in the mill were
summoned to tighten the press by pushing or pulling a long
wooden lever. An average 2-foot post might be reduced to 6
or 8 inches in this way. After pressing, the sheets were
strong enough to be lifted from the felts and hung to dry,
usually in groups of four or five known as "spurs" to
prevent wrinkling and curling. Drying was usually carried
out in the highest level of the mill, away from soot and
dust.
Typical of the card-like papers produced in
period, was the rough and highly absorbent surface which
made it difficult for calligraphers to difficult to achieve
a thin line. To make the paper less absorbent, the dried
sheet was dipped in animal gelatin or glue. Such sizing was
more important for writing papers than for printing stock,
since printing inks were thicker and did not soak into the
paper so easily. The first method for smoothing the sheet
was simply to burnish each sheet by hand with a glossy
stone; a water-powered hammer smoother was developed in the
early 17th century.
Attaching a wire pattern to the mesh of a
paper mold forms watermarks. When the paper slurry is
drained of its water, the layer of residual fibers over the
raised wire pattern is thinner than the rest of the sheet.
When pressed and dried, these thinner areas result in
patterns that only show clearly when held up to the light.
European papermakers were the first to use watermarks. As an
offshoot of the guild system, the watermark served as a
means of identifying the paper with the members of the trade
organization who manufactured it. Just as with trademarks
stamped into silver or firearms, the watermark indicated
that the paper was the product of a trained artisan's
labors.
Watermarks and deckle edges are typical of
medieval handmade papers. Today, Medieval Watermarks provide
crucial evidence for the bibliographical analysis of early
book production, for they help identify lots of paper moving
through a printing shop. Watermarks and the related
characteristics of hand made paper (countermarks, chain and
wire lines, and physical traits), are the "fingerprints" by
which we can date and establish the provenance of
manuscripts from the late medieval and humanist eras. The
evidence of the paper on which they are written can link
even unsigned manuscripts with the centers of copy or the
scribes that produced them.
Bibliography
"American Museum of Papermaking Web Page",
Institute of Paper Science and Technology, 2000
http://www.ipst.edu/amp/
Carvalho, David N; "Four Centuries of Ink",
Project Gutenburg, Champaign, 1998
Clement, Richard W.; "Manuscript Books",
Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies,
http://orb.rhodes.edu/encyclop/culture/books/medbook1.html
de Hamel, Christopher; "A History of
Illuminated Manuscripts", Phaidon Press Ltd, London, 1997
Diehl, Edith; "Bookbinding; It’s background
and technique", Dover Publishing, New York, 1980
"English Paper", The British National
Archives Public Records Office,
http://www.pro.gov.uk/default.htm, 1998
McDonald, Lee; "The Guide to Papermaking",
Lee S. McDonald, Inc, Charelstown, 2000
The British Association of Paper Historians,
http://www.baph.freeserve.co.uk
"Paper Online", CEPI - Confederation of
European Paper Industries,
http://www.paperonline.org/index.html
Velke Losiny Watermarks
http://members.tripod.com/~handmadepaper/w_en.htm, 1998
