Quick History of Paper-Making

Before we get to the history of papercutting, it would be helpful to look at a brief history of paper-making.

This life-size statue, which stands in the center of the Paper Museum, is an adaptation of an illustration entitled "The Papermaker," which is believed to have first appeared in 1698 in the Book of Trades by Christopher Weigel.

The word "paper" is etymologically derived from the ancient Greek term "papyrus" for the Cyperus papyrus plant. This plant was widely available around the Nile delta and the ancient Egyptians were the first to use the pith of this plant use to produce a thick, paper-like material. The earliest known roll of papyrus was excavated from a tomb at Saqqara, Egypt and is dated to around 2900 B.C.

Papyrus spread throughout the Mediterranean as a main writing material. In Rome and Greece, the papyrus scroll became a culturally engrained standard for many years. In later centuries, mass quantities of papyrus were also shipped to Europe.

Although used predominately as a writing material, papyrus is not considered "true paper" because papyrus is made from overlapping strips of the pith of the Cyperus papyrus plant. In contrast, "true paper" involves the decomposition of natural materials into a pulp, and then the fibers of the pulp are pressed together and dried into paper. Essentially, the method of paper-making is part of what is considered "true paper" or not.

Close-up of an ancient Egyptian papyrus manuscript: Papyrus (P. BM EA 10591 recto column IX, beginning of lines 13–17).

In the second century AD, parchment gained popularity as a writing material. Parchment prepared from animal skins is thought to have been used as early as 1500 B.C., but the invention is often credited to the King of Pergamum in Asia Minor circa 197-159 B.C. The development of parchment was mainly in response to the cessation of Egyptian papyrus exports to the region.

The process of skinning, soaking, dehairing, and then stretching animal skins into parchment is labor intensive, much more so than the process of plant-based papyrus. However, parchment tended to have a more smoother writing surface than parchment, and was not as sensitive to moisture as papyrus was. In addition, it was often cheaper to buy locally-sourced parchment than import papyrus from Egypt. Even as parchment largely replaced papyrus in the Arab world and parts of Europe, papyrus was continued to be in Greece, Rome, and some parts of medieval Europe until the 11th century.

Modern goat-skin being stretched into parchment using traditional methods.

Traditionally, the invention of true paper is credited to Cai Lun, an imperial court official of the Han dynasty in China circa 104 AD. However, archeological evidence indicates that papermaking evolved hundreds of years before. The exact date or inventor cannot be deduced, but the earliest fragments of paper found in China have been dated to 179-141 BC. Rather than being the true inventor of paper, Cai Lun's contribution might have been improving the skill of papermaking by fixing a 'recipe' for papermaking in a more systematic and scientific manner. Cai Lun used pulp from tree bark and hemp ends which resulted in the large-scale manufacture and worldwide spread of paper.

The oldest fragment of paper found to date, belonging to a map, was discovered in 1986 in Fangmatan, north-eastern China. Copyright: www.ilpost.it

Various natural materials were used for papermaking in China, including the bark of paper mulberry, hemp, rattan, and even bamboo. Fibers were harvested from these materials and soaked in large pits lines with stones or wood vats. Fibers were soaked, or "ret," for up to three months. Then the fibers were pounded into pulp, likely with rocks or wooden tools. A scoop of pulp would then be poured on top of a mold and spread out evenly by hand. The mold contained a screen such that the water would drain through, leaving the pulp behind. The screen mold was then placed in the sun to day. After the dry paper was peeled off the mold, the process may be repeated several times.

The use of paper spread steadily throughout Asia, reaching Vietnam in the 3rd century A.D., to Korea int he 4th century, and to Japan in the 5th century. Each of these societies continued to experiment with the papermaking process and with various materials. The Koreans, for example, added animal power to the pulp-making process and invented the laid paper mold-- a bamboo frams with a screen cover and two deckle strips. A deckle is a removable wooden frame placed into a mold to keep the paper pulp slurry within the bounds of the screen. It also allows for control of the size of paper sheet produced. The Japanese developed washi paper from the combination of three plants: kozo, mitsumata, and gampi. Washi paper is very thin, slightly transparent, and smooth like silk. In 770 CE, the Empress Shotuko ordered the first mass printing on paper, known as the Hyakumanto Dharani. One million copies of a series of prayers were printed on paper by woodblocks to commemorate the end of a rebellion.

By the 8th century A.D., Central Asia shifted from parchment to paper, although it is unknown if papermaking knowledge was brought from China along the Silk Road trading route, or if it was separately developed on its own. Central Asian papermaking techniques were different than Chinese methods, and generally used waste materials like rags instead of plant fibers. It's possible that papermaking innovations in Central Asia may be pre-Islamic. However, the Islamic civilization helped spread paper and papermaking into the Middle East after the 8th century. There are records of paper being made in Samarkand (Uzbekistan) by 751, Baghdad by 793, in Egypt by 900, in Moroccoo by 1100, and then in Damascus and Aleppo (Syria) around the 12th century. Samarkand was known for high-quality paper made for copies of the Quran, and Baghdad established the first water-powered paper mill around 794 CE.

The tools and technique of making paper leaf depicted in a volume illustrating crafts and trades, Kashmir.

Islamic papermaking typically used hemp, flax, cotton, and old rags. Muslim papermakers also introduced the use of trip hammers in the production of paper. This was a human- or animal-powered method of pressing paper and replaced the traditional Chinese mortar and pestle method. This trip hammer method was later employed by the Chinese.

There is some evidence from historical documents of Chinese visitors to India that paper was used there as early as the 7th century A.D. It is likely that paper technology arrived in India from China through Tiber and Nepal around mid-7th century, when Buddhist monks freely traveled to India. However, specially treated palm-leaves and thin sheets of birch back remained the preferred writing surface in most of India through the late medieval period. The oldest surviving paper manuscripts are traced to around the 12th century.

Paper technology did not arrive in Europe until the 11th century A.D., probably using paper made in the Islamic part of the Iberian Peninsula, and spreading out from there. Hemp and linen rages were used as a source of fiber. The first recorded paper mill in the Iberian Peninsula is dated to 1056. From there, papermaking reached Toledo in 1085 and was firmly establish in Spain by 1150. Paper mills were established in Italian towns by 1340, and then spread north. Papermaking spread to France by 1348, to Holland sometime around 1340-1350, and to Germany by 1390. There was a paper mill established in Switzerland by 1432, to England by 1490, to Austria by 1469, to Poland by 1491, to Russia by 1576, to the Netherlands by 1586, to Denmark by 1596, and to Sweden by 1612.

Ruins of a 9th century paper mill in Córdoba, Spain.

The Europeans used cotton and linen as their papermaking fiber of choice, collected mostly from recycled clothing. Only about two-thirds of rags sold to paper mills were usable for papermaking. Sometimes papermakes added lime to the rags to speed up fermentation, but this resulted in weaker paper. Fabriano papermakers in Italy perfected the paper mold using wood and metal, which cold be reused immediately after peeling a sheet off to be "couched" or pressed onto a felt blanket. Fabriano is also credited with the creation of watermakers and sizing of paper with gelatin to provide water resistance with writing and printing materials. Fabriano still makes fine paper today.

In the Americas, archaeological evidence suggests that the ancient Mayan civilization used a bark-paper material no later than the 5th century A.D. Called amatl or amate, it was widespread among Mesoamerican cultures until the Spanish conquest. Amate is more similar to paper than papyrus in that the material is broken down into fibers, but the base material has large fibers that make for a rougher writing surface. European papermaking spread to the Americans first in Mexico through the Spanish importing paper due to colonial regulations. By 1575, the impracticality of importing paper was realized and the first paper mill was established in the village of Culhuácan, just south of Mexico City.

Part of the Huexotzinco Codex, written on amate.

By 1690, paper mills and papermaking had spread to Philadelphia, with the Rittenhouse Mill established as the first papermill in the British colonies. Between 1639 and 1728, the demand for paper grew substantially, as thirty-seven printers were in operation, and printed over 3,067 books, pamphlets, and broadsides. In addition, six newspapers were in circulation as well. The British could not export enough paper to meet the demand within the colonies, but there was concern that builing new paper mills in the colonies would out-compete existing mills, especially in Britain. So, in 1765, England passed the Stamp Act, which imposed a tax on every sheet of paper used for writing or printing, including newspapers. Colonists, especially newspaper publishers, were displeased with this tax, which helped to fan the flames of the Revolutionary War.

The Rittenhouse Mill and homestead became the heart of thriving, early industrial community outside Philadelphia.

Further taxes and tariffs placed import duties on glass, paper, paperboard, lead, painter's colors, and tea. Several of the colonies legislated non-importation acts, which included a prohibition on paper, in response to the tariffs. This expanded the need for paper, even as the colonists built more paper mills. After the Revolutionary War, papermills proliferated across the former colonies. By 1794, there were at least 48 paper-mills in Pennsylvania, and 15 in Delaware. By the end of the 18th century, there was an estimated 100 to 125 mills in the United States.

Paper remained expensive until the invention of steam-driven papermaking machines in the 19th century. These machines could make paper with fibers from wood pulp. The Fourdrinier machine was patented in 1799, and is essentially an industrialized version of the historical process of hand papermaking. It allows for the creation of paper in large quantites at high speed, and modern papermaking machines are based on the principles of the Fourdrinier machine.

Before the industrialization of paper production, the most common fiber source were recycled fibers from rags of hemp, linen, and cotton textiles. Some had experimented with wood pulp, but without large success until the late 18th and early 19th century. In 1800, Matthias Koops in England printed a book on paper made from wood shavings and adhered together, but was unable to continue producing paper and went bankrupt.

The first paper machine in the United States was built in 1817 at the Gilpin Paper Mill in Brandywine Creek, Delaware by Thomas Gilpin. Gilpin and his brother Joshua studied with papermakers and paper machine inventors in Europe. In the 1830s and 1840s, Friedrich Gottlob Keller and Charles Fenerty added to the advance of papermaking by pulping wood instead of rags. They both invented a machine which extracted the fibers from wood and made paper from it. Fenerty also bleached the pulp so that the paper was white. This started a new era for paper. By the end of the 19th century, mills that had not changed to the machine had died out since they could not compete economically, and a new era for paper-making in the Western world was introduced with this change to using wood instead of rags.

Keller's original grinding machine.

The downside of using wood fibers in the pulp over rags was that early-wood based paper deteriorated easily over time. The acid nature of this paper, caused by the use of alum, slowly turned paper to ash. By the second half of the 20th century, acid-free paper was developed and began to be used in books. This paper can last much longer, but is still more expensive than acidic paper, which remains in use for mass-market paperback books, newspapers, and in underdeveloped countries.

A model of the Fourdrinier machine.

By the second half of the 20th century, acid-free paper was developed and begin to be used in books. This paper can last much longer, but is still more expensive than acidic paper, which remains in use for mass-market paperback books, newspapers, and in underdeveloped countries.

And that is the (relatively) quick history of paper-making!

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Here's a fun infographic that summarizes the History Written ABove:

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